The wilted beauty of Coney Island, the dramatic industrial architecture of the Gowanus Canal and Greenpoint, the new park below the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges and nocturnes painted from South Street Seaport will all be featured in the show “Edge of the City: The Waterfront Paintings of Gregory William Frux.” The exhibition of showcases more than thirty oil paintings documenting New York City’s uneasy relationship with her extensive waterfront.

Linking these works is the concept of the shoreline as a contested landscape. Frux’s series, which investigates abandoned and reclaimed places, includes several locations that have since been radically altered – the vanished Atlantis Cafe in Coney, and a huge warehouse in Greenpoint, destroyed in an April 2006 conflagration.  However, as water pollution around the city has abated, other neglected and abandoned places are being reclaimed for public use and Frux’s work celebrates this change. Two recent paintings depict cormorants on pilings and a kayaker in the East River.  Begun in the early 1990s Frux’s fourteen year exploration of the harbor has been both a physical journey by foot, kayak and canoe on the edge of the city and an investigation of history and ecology, drawing on the resources of the Coney Island Museum, Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club, South Street Seaport and Long Island City Community Boat House.

The exhibit opens December 4th and runs through January 31st 2008 at La Guardia Community College, Fine Arts Gallery located at 21-10 Thomson Avenue, Long Island City, New York.  The citing of “Edge of the City” is not accidental—the school is within three blocks of the sea level canal English Kill.  Frux visited this site via Newtown Creek during his kayak exploration of the area.

Frux, aged 49, has shown work as far afield as California’s Death Valley National Park and the National Museum of Art of Kyrgyzstan.  He is scheduled to travel as an artist in residence on a cruise ship to Antarctica in December.  Closer to home, he has exhibited at Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Museum Community Gallery, the Salmagundi Club, Brooklyn Borough Hall, the Tweed Gallery, Long Island University, American Alpine Club and the offices of HBO.    His work is in the collection of the Library of Congress, New York University, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the NYC Department of Education, the Brooklyn Arts Council and three National Parks.  .He painted the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Park Slope Poster as part of its series on the neighborhoods of New York.

Artist reception at the exhibition, December 6th between 5:30 and 7 PM