White Monument, 2011

Dean Monogenis   Emerging artists

Dean Monogenis was born in New York in 1973. He attended Skidmore College and graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago. Since then, he has lived and worked in Brooklyn, New York.

Dean Monogenis's paintings reveal architectures modernist or contemporary, in natural environments free of human beings. The buildings, either in construction or in ruins, stand isolated in landscapes that are difficult to identify. Archeologies of the present, traces of a recent civilization and in perpetual evolution, the universes described by Monogenis underline the moment of passage, the fight between a massive urbanization and a nature which remains resistant.

He is interested in exploring the awkward beauty inherent in development and decay. The concept of transformation - in theory and practice - has a firm place in his work. Dean Monogenis is inspired by his own collection of images that he accumulated during his travels or found on Internet.

Normally, he paints on wood or plastic panels employing customized stencils. Utilizing the dialogue established between different painting techniques, these stencil-applied graphic elements are integrated with areas that he paints freehand. Line, edge, and texture are very important to him as well.

The strength of Dean Monogenis's work resides in his ability to combine the observer's vision of the world with the metamorphoses in his paintings.