DUMBO, New York

Tom Fruin’s Watertower, 2012 - Photos by Robert Banat

Tom Fruin’s work can currently be seen when driving on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway or when in DUMBO, where one of his Watertowers has served as the unofficial guardian of the cultural melting pot and rapidly gentrifying community beneath it for the last year. Using found sign shop offcuts and brilliantly-hued plexiglass scraps from the streets of Chinatown, Fruin weaves patchworks of primary colors into striated grids by utilizing the compositionality developed in his earlier drug-bag quilts. Broadening the quilts and their context, Fruin takes the visual language of the cultural symbols embedded on the drug-bags (cigar wrappers, eight balls, dice) and expands upon their forgotten existence by framing them next to or within other mementos, remembrances, and gestures of the urban sprawl. The works offer new introspection into the secret language of the overlooked communities aesthetically elevated within his work.

Mike Weiss Gallery

520 W 24th St.
New York, NY 10011