Art Hag

Rosson Crow's Bowery Boys currently at Deitch Projects' Wooster Street location features bold, large-scale, oil, acrylic, and enamel paintings that "explore[s] the history of 'bad boys' in underground art and as an agent of culture in New York City," (from show's press release). Rosson's works examine "the rebellious and lawless side of New York City history" from a "wild-style bombed" subway train and station from the 1980s to a "haunting red opium den from Chinatown in the 1880s." More recognizable NYC landmarks that are referenced in her works include the Bowery Mission, the New Museum, MoMA, Keith Haring's Pop Shop, the East Village gay bar The Cock, and recent west-side hotspot, the Boom Boom Room. Even Deitch Projects is referenced in a piece that prominently uses the bright colors of the gallery's logo and in another that depicts Dash Snow and Dan Colen's infamous NEST installation that was staged at the gallery's Grand Street location in 2007.

According to the press release, the 28-year-old Texas-born artist who received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts and her MFA from Yale, "has always shown a marked interest in masculine spaces; she has previously painted saloons, gun shops, oil derricks, rodeos, stock market floors, and many incidents in the arguably male-dominated tradition of modern art." While she "explores the idea of the 'bad boy' as fawned over by art audiences and celebrated in New York City history" with her dramatic, multi-layered, almost life-sized pieces "[H]er frank, punk, post-gender attack is more personal than political, and more imaginative than expository; or in simpler terms, more badass." Learn more at Deitch.com. Through March 27th.

Peep Land, 2010