For her third solo project with the gallery, Arielle Falk presents a dramatic installation in an old East Hampton barn. While colorful plants grace gallery walls as outlets to otherworldly tranquility, Falk offers an alternative perspective of the palm tree. Using a heat gun, she disintegrates commercially- manufactured murals depicting idyllic tropical stock imagery intended as inspirational office back- drops.

Burning away these generic paradisiacal scenes illuminates and destroys the chimerical, ever-present sense of wanting, “fantasy”. The beauty of human imagination, which invokes our drive to desire, inherently possesses a shadowy side. When glorified longing remains unfulfilled, dreams become nightmares. Falk examines when lofty fantasies transgress into mirage veiling escapist traps. With paradise lost, its charred remains survive as a devastating distraction.

Arielle Falk (b. 1983, Washington DC) is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary conceptual artist. She re- ceived her BA from Eugene Lang College (NYC) in 2007 and has since exhibited her work at venues including Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton; Safe Gallery, Brooklyn; Ronchini Gallery, London; P.P.O.W Gallery, NY; as well as at video festivals throughout the United States and abroad. She is a 2010-2011 recipient of the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art. Her work has been noted by such publications as The Village Voice, Time Out NY, The Huffington Post, Hyperallergic.com, and NY Magazine, as well as featured on WNYC Radio.