KEN SCHLES – INVISIBLE CITY/NIGHTWALKS
2015-02-02In 1983, Ken Schles moved into an apartment on Avenue B in the East Village. His windows were boarded up because his landlord said that junkies could steal the gates with a crowbar. This worked to Schles’s advantage – he set up a darkroom. Life moved at a tumultuous pace. Downstairs, a woman with three kids was a heroin addict and dealers used her apartment as a shooting gallery. The city shut down the boiler in the building, which was spewing carbon monoxide. With scenes like this playing out daily right outside his doorstep, Schles found gripping subject matter in and around the neighborhood.
The exhibition presents images from both Night Walk and Invisible City, revealing a provocative narrative of lost youth and a private view of an irretrievable downtown New York as Schles saw and experienced it.
Among the highlights of the show is Drowned in Sorrow, 1984, depicting a shabbily glamorous woman in a short dress, torn stockings and heels, lying across a couch while talking on a corded telephone. The headline of the Village Voice on the plank wood floor reads ‘Drowned in Sorrow.’ In Limelight (Suzie Streetwalker, Ellen Kenneally, Nick Egan and Johnny Dynell), 1983, Schles captures the nightlife of his time as a woman in white sits on a ledge, vacant and alone with a drink in her hand, while three club denizens in the foreground chat and laugh. In Burning Building with Moonrise, 1984, neighbors stand and watch as a tenement goes up in flames with the full moon rising above the urban landscape.
Opposite – 4th of July (Independence Day), 1984
Exhibition runs through to March 14th, 2015
Howard Greenberg Gallery
The Fuller Building
41 East 57 Street
Suite 1406
New York
NY 10022
