John Torreano, clinical professor of art and art education, is a celebrated painter and sculptor. In a new exhibition currently hanging at NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, Torreano presents a series of striking photographs of many of the abandoned and decaying automobile factories of his hometown, Flint, Michigan. The exhibition is both a highly personal remembrance of the artist’s early life and a powerful documentation of a post-industrial landscape in the United States.
I recently toured the exhibition with the artist, and asked him about the genesis of the project. He says sees the crumbling factories as “beautiful forms of architecture and perfect examples of a decaying modernism, in that they were completely essential in the modernist sense of form following function, to the Nth degree.”
Below you’ll find an audio slideshow of images from the exhibition, narrated by the artist himself. The exhibition is on view through March 21.
Comments (1)
John, I got to speak for quite a while with Jack McCormick and his wife at the SJV alumni reunion last Saturday, August 22. He told me about your visit to Flint and these photographs. Very nice job. When I saw the slide of Jack, then his old home, the picture I expected to see next was Haskell Community Center. I'll never forget all the wonderful stories (true or not) that you would tell when you were working in the little geedunk/locker storage. You also taught me how to spit shine shoes there. Thanks, I hope all is well and take care. Jim McCormick (Miriam's brother)
Posted by Mac McCormick | August 28, 2009 3:58 PM