Alan Wolfson

Art Brokerage: Alan Wolfson American Artist: b. 1948. Alan Wolfson's intricately detailed New York scenes evoke the gritty history of this often seamy city as he recreates the grime of the subway platform, the harsh lighting of the deli counter, and the beckoning pleasures of Times Square in the 1970s. Nostalgia for the 'bad old days' looms large in Wolfson's work. His miniature urban vignettes transport the viewer into the past, allowing them to fill these tiny spaces with imagined narratives. Wolfson encourages these narratives through the depiction of "the things that people leave behind – graffiti, trash, overflowing ashtrays, a tip left on a table or a door ajar – all evidence of someone having just been there." Wolfson studied art history in college, and was particularly inspired by the Surrealist box constructions of Joseph Cornell and the urban assemblages of Edward Kienholz. His own work stands at the intersection between these two bodies of work, inheriting the diminutive scale and enclosed spaces of Cornell and the surreal urban landscape of Kienholz. Each of Wolfson's environments fuses real and imagined architecture to create evocative compositions that "engage us visually and intellectually by positioning the viewer in that 'suspension of disbelief' location somewhere between the theatrical and cinematic experience. Listings wanted.