Mad Art Gallery is proud to present Matty Kleinberg's MFA thesis exhibition, Reflections of a Private Public. This exhibition will run from Friday, April 25, 2008, through Thursday, May 1, 2008. Matty Kleinberg's work utilizes reflections of once functioning urban spaces to transform the gallery into a surrogate public plaza. In this setting, large-scale woodcuts set a pace and rhythm that invoke banks of windows, a collective reflected image of a publicly accessible area. Layers of imagery meld together into one conglomerate view, branches of trees intertwine with reflections of experienced housing and the memory of abandonment amid vitality. Leaves and brick become lost in one another. Centered among these reflections is the subject matter from which imagery bounces back and forth is an immense quilt that depicts the gridded street layout of Old North St. Louis and color-codes the area's viability. Throughout the exhibition, the gallery serves as surrogate public square, and the gallery viewers become the visitors and residents of this newly created neighborhood area. In this way, a supposedly unusable, forgotten area is reactivated. At the heart of Kleinberg's work is a driving hope for social change and introspection. Presenting altered versions of the public realm provide the impetus for re-examining preconceived notions as well as an opportunity for reflection and interaction. Please join us for an opening reception on Friday, April 25, 2008, from 7:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m. This promises to be a fantastic exhibit, and it will not be up long, so be sure to see it on April 25.
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