CHRIS BOGIA
Fountains
Knockdown Center
Maspeth, NY
December 1, 2023 – May 1, 2024
Mrs. is very pleased to announce the gallery’s latest partnership with our Maspeth neighbors, the Knockdown Center. In 2023, Mrs. has curated two of Knockdown’s “FiftyTwo Ft. series;” a long-term wall-based artwork installed in the Center’s East Corridor at 52-19 Flushing Avenue. For the second collaboration, Mrs. presents a new large-scale work by gallery artist Chris Bogia titled Fountains.
In this continuation of his Fountains series, Bogia depicts five fountains in a row, the full moon rising above their center. Traditionally found in the middle of a village's civic space, fountains are gathering spaces, providing their beauty free of charge to those who find themselves nearby. A symbol of life, balance, and mystical harmony, the fountain adorns a landscape like jewelry. In this painting, every fountain is identical, their mirrored shapes differentiated only by the water depicted flowing through their structure.
Chris Bogia received his BFA at New York University and MFA from Yale University. Bogia was a recent recipient of the Jackson Pollock - Lee Krasner Foundation Grant; a Queens Council for the Arts, New Works Grant; as well as a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Artist Community Engagement Grant, and the Tiffany Foundation grant. He was also an artist in residence at the Queens Museum Studio Program from 2017-2018. Recent exhibitions include a public project with Art in Buildings in NYC, a solo presentation at Mrs. Gallery, group exhibitions at Hesse Flatow, NYC, Primary, Miami, RUSCHMAN, Chicago, The Public Art Fund, NYC, Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles, Bric, Brooklyn, Mrs. Gallery, The New Museum, and a presentation at NADA with Mrs. Gallery in 2020. Bogia is the co-founder of Fire Island Artist Residency (FIAR), the first LGBTQ artist residency in the world, and was FIAR’s acting director from 2011- 2020. He is currently an instructor of sculpture at New York University.
Fountains is on view at Knockdown Center, 52-19 Flushing Ave., Maspeth, Queens, NY 11378 through May 1, 2024. For more information please contact hello@mrsgallery.com.