What's Pictured: Andrew Borowiec,
Duquesne, Pennsylvania, 2010, inkjet print, © Andrew Borowiec and Lee Marks Fine Art
Andrew Borowiec (b. 1956, New York, NY) has been photographing the Midwestern industrial landscape for thirty years. Stretching east from New York State through Pennsylvania and into Ohio, the “Rust Belt” was the epicenter of the nation’s steel and coal industries from the turn of the nineteenth century. Beginning in the mid-1980s, however, the region sank into a steady economic decline that transformed once thriving communities into ghost towns. Recovery seemed to be on the horizon in the early 2000s, as plans were made to grow new businesses, repurpose former industrial sites, and construct new housing. Yet, when the United States slipped into recession in 2008, the Rust Belt felt the blow once again. It was in this climate that Borowiec embarked on a new project, intending to trace the rebuilding process. Instead, he began photographing an environment where boarded-up storefronts, dilapidated houses, and abandoned street corners are abutted, and occasionally eclipsed, by glimpses of the American dream. Borowiec’s exhibition in Joslyn’s Riley CAP Gallery will feature a selection of color photographs from
The Post-Industrial Rust Belt (2009–2012). Informed by the cultural, political, and economic histories of the sites he explores, as well as by his own personal experience of those locations, Borowiec presents a portrait of a quintessentially American landscape that is at once sobering and hopeful.
What's Pictured: (Above)
Charleroi, Pennsylvania, 2009; (below)
Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania, 2012; both inkjet prints, © Andrew Borowiec and Lee Marks Fine Art
The Karen and Doug Riley Contemporary Artists Project Gallery
A 500-square-foot space in the Scott Pavilion suite of
galleries, the
Riley CAP Gallery showcases nationally- and internationally-recognized
artists, as well as emerging talent, selected by Joslyn curators. A
rotating schedule of intimate, carefully focused exhibitions will
examine how artists engage with the world and respond to the issues that
challenge them creatively, bringing new perspectives on contemporary
art to Nebraska.
Riley CAP Gallery artists will be invited to Joslyn for lectures and
other public programs, giving audiences the opportunity to gain insight
into creative processes and contribute to an expanded dialogue about new
art. The first Joslyn gallery dedicated exclusively to living artists,
the Riley CAP Gallery represents an important step in making
contemporary art an even more integral component of the Museum’s
exhibition programming.