Sebastian Gladstone

Ed. Varie is pleased to present The Giving Tree, Sebastian Gladstone's first solo exhibition in New York.

Gladstone grew up in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, surrounded by shopping malls, chain restaurants, and minivans. To Gladstone, the suburbs of Los Angeles represented an urban sprawl created out of a cultural black hole, a society based on large-scale marketing campaigns and stories told on American Idol. The artist's childhood was marked by time spent in pools and shopping malls, a way of combating the hot desert climate, defining vapid in more than one way. The exhibition, The Giving Tree, aims to create a microcosm of Gladstone's Angelino Valley upbringing. Reinterpreting the suburban 'American Dream', a utopian like life based around simple pantomimes that orbit the nuclear family; a man, a woman, 2 children, and a dog; the house, the car, and a backyard for quiet reflection, protection from the elements, and a barrier to the exterior world.

The exhibition title, The Giving Tree, is borrowed from the children's book written by Shel Silverstein. Widely read and circulated, the story unfolds and the reader discovers that over the boy's lifetime his childhood tree is depleted to a stump by the exasperating need of money, lumber, and other material things for the boy himself. Gladstone's paintings printed on brushed aluminum, alongside a mixed media, store bought paradise, will create a contemporary interpretation of a Zen Garden to reflect the facade of material necessity.

Sebastian Gladstone, currently based in Brooklyn, studied Fine Art Photography at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, and Figure Drawing at The Animation Guild. In 2014 Gladstone had his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles at Sunday Gallery. Gladstone is the Founder of Big Cult Collective, and the Editor in Chief of Foundations Magazine, a contemporary art and culture publication, launched in the U.S. at Ed. Varie in 2014. The Giving Tree will be Gladstone's first solo exhibition in New York, presented by Ed. Varie.