DFN Gallery is pleased to present New Work by Rick Finkelstein. In these dream-like oil paintings, Finkelstein presents landscapes that appear at first glance to be fairly mundane. In fact, rather than a series of non sequiturs from a fitful night’s sleep, these paintings are derived from the scenes of real-life events in which Man, Icarus-like, has pushed against his limitations and suffered the unfortunate, if not inevitable, consequences.

Finkelstein, who in his earlier days as a public defender spent much time analyzing crime scenes, is fascinated by stories of people who reveal their (and our) humanity by going too far – whether due to unchecked ambition, bad judgment, or mental instability. These stories are the source material for his moody and nearly monochromatic paintings. In White Island, a single man in a red parka is surrounded by a vast Arctic landscape. He is a member of an expedition exploring the uninhabited Norwegian island of Kvitoya (White Island in English), where the Swedish balloonist S.A. Andree and two others perished in their attempt to float over the North Pole in 1897. In Socorro, New Mexico, a small painting of what appears to be reclining sun bathers, is in fact a portrayal of a group of scientists observing the detonation of an atomic bomb. Brooklyn, New York, is a view of the bathroom where Abner Louima was tortured following his arrest by New York City police officers in 1997.

Finkelstein’s paintings are inspired in part by W.H. Auden‘s poem Musee des Beaux Arts, written about Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting Fall of Icarus. Bruegel’s whimsical painting shows the fallen Icarus in the sea, his doomed fate barely significant in relation to the rest of the daily activity depicted in the coastal landscape. Of this, Auden famously wrote, "About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; how well, they understood/ Its human position; how it takes place/ While someone else is eating or opening a window of just walking dully along…"

Rick Finkelstein has been painting and drawing full time for several years following a career as a public interest and criminal trial lawyer and as an Assistant Professor at New York University Law School. His work has been exhibited at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, Parkers Box in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and at the Inquiring Mind Gallery in Saugerties, New York. This is Rick Finkelstein’s second solo show at DFN Gallery.