The works in this exhibition are deeply influenced by Assiff’s attunement to the wild plants that grow between the concrete which he passes daily on his walks from home to studio. Generally considered weeds, Assiff prefers the gardening term “volunteers” for these plants that colonize the available urban space. He observes and documents these plants throughout their life cycles, learning their names, researching their uses, and experiencing each plant through touch, smell, and taste. Assiff channels this multi-sensory research into his translations of these plants into paint, sculpting and composing their painted forms by a logic informed equally by personal aesthetic, botanical study and interior design trends.
Last year, Assiff became enchanted with the overgrowth of All Faiths Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens. He was overwhelmed by the exuberant growth that was possible when grass was not mowed and wild plants were permitted to flourish free from herbicides. Upon investigation, Assiff uncovered that this flourishing was permitted due to the cemetery’s Board of Directors’ embezzlement and their indifference towards maintaining the grounds. The maintenance crew had been reduced from 60 employees to 9, with hundreds of thousands of dollars meant for operations misappropriated. Meanwhile, the cemetery has been sued by the Attorney General of New York, Letitia James, and its assets have been frozen. To make the paintings in Volunteer Flowers, Assiff has re-created the plants from All Faiths Cemetery with a devotion that is unconventional to a cemetery’s intended function, but which honors the site with a reverence that is befitting nonetheless.
With their 1:1 scale and uniform color, Assiff places these works in relation to the art historical lineage of the monochrome, a genre that emphasizes the materiality of the painted object and the relationship of the viewer’s body to the painting. The apocalyptic discourse surrounding the monochrome—the end of painting—fits our current moment’s tone of climate change angst—the end of life as we know it on planet earth. Like the never-ending triumph of painting in art history, weeds will dominate Earth in the carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere of the future. Do Assiff’s paintings function without a viewer? The vibrating energy of these self-contained worlds suggests that even in this human-made nature, life goes on without us in the room.
–Sterling Francis Wells
methacrylic, oil paint, tinted gesso, latex, and steel on canvas
2021
detail
detail
methacrylic, latex, acrylic, tinted gesso, steel on canvas
47 x 59 x 6"
2021
detail
detail
methacrylic, latex, acrylic, tinted gesso, steel on canvas
47 x 59 x 6"
2021
detail
detail
methacrylic, oil paint, tinted gesso, latex, and steel on canvas
47.5 x 59.5 x 8"
2021
detail
detail
methacrylic, latex, acrylic, tinted gesso, steel on canvas
18x20x4"
2021
methacrylic, latex, acrylic, tinted gesso, steel on canvas
18x20x
detail