Stare between the frames of Jake Longstreth's ethereal landscapes, and your mind is torn between a feeling of delicate tranquility and a sense of cloying uneasiness.
Are the rolling mountains and saturated skies part of a welcome and familiar vision, or do the murky images belie a darker reality? One that painstakingly depicts a slightly off-balance moment that's already passed us by; a condition of a world plagued by climate change and degradation.
Jake Longstreth, Particulate Matter #13, 2013, oil on canvas with artist frame, 19 by 15 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Monya Rowe Gallery, New York.
"We are aware that the planet is in flux, where precarious relationships can fall quickly off-balance, yet appearances and routines in our day-to-day lives remain, for most of us, largely unchanged," Longstreth wrote in a statement. "'Particulate Matter' explores this contradiction."
Longstreth's color palette is restrained -- ranging from white to green to brown to blue and back again. With carefully placed brushstrokes and a sense of repetition across the canvases, the works act like blurred windows into a time and place unknown.
Jake Longstreth, Particulate Matter #18, 2013, oil on canvas with artist frame, 19 by 15 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Monya Rowe Gallery, New York.
"They don't so much dramatize the conditions of air pollution and climate change," Longstreth added, "but infer the subtle and creeping insidiousness of our current moment. Are we gently sliding into the abyss? From day-to-day, it's impossible to tell."
Scroll through a preview of "Particulate Matter," on view now at Monya Rowe Gallery in New York City until January 5, 2014.
Jake Longstreth, Particulate Matter #20, 2013, oil on canvas with artist frame, 19 by 15 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Monya Rowe Gallery, New York.
Jake Longstreth, Particulate Matter #11, 2013, oil on canvas with artist frame, 19 by 15 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Monya Rowe Gallery, New York.
Jake Longstreth, Particulate Matter #2, 2013, oil on canvas with artist frame, 19 by 15 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Monya Rowe Gallery, New York.
Jake Longstreth, Particulate Matter #21, 2013, oil on canvas with artist frame, 19 by 15 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Monya Rowe Gallery, New York.
Jake Longstreth, Particulate Matter #16, 2013, oil on canvas with artist frame, 19 by 15 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Monya Rowe Gallery, New York.