Lilac Gallery New York is pleased to present “Gowanus: Off the Water’s Surface,” a solo exhibition of photographs by Steven Hirsch, from November 12 through December 15, 2014. The exhibition will open with a reception on November 12 from 7-9 p.m.

Stunning with toxic beauty, the abstract and psychedelic work on view was captured by Steven Hirsch’s lens at the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, one of America’s most polluted waterways. Revealing otherworldly waterscapes in the slime and detritus atop the tainted water, Hirsch’s painterly images swirl in a frenzy of elusive shapes and bright and explosive colors. The artist, known for his many projects depicting the fringe, states, “I would sit there on the side of the canal, and what looked like a giant painting by Monet would be there in front of me hovering on the surface of the water.”

Many of the more than 25 photographs on view reveal such hints of Impressionistic hue and texture. Hirsch, in his exploration of the industrial wasteland, finds a saturated palette of golds, deep purples, gleaming silvers, ebony blacks, phalto blues, and intense pinks. And within the intangible worlds depicted, arise visions of figures, faces and bodies, and natural forms like waterfalls, landscapes, glaciers, and galaxies.

Steven Hirsch was born in Brooklyn, New York. His work has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, Paris Match, Time, Wired, Vice, The Huffington Post, The Atlantic and Stern. He has taught at the International Center of Photography, The New School, Parsons School of Design, the School of Visual Arts, New York University and is currently teaching at Pratt Institute. Hirsch has been awarded two New York Foundation for the Arts grants and his work has been widely exhibited and collected by The Museum of Modern Art, Polaroid Collection, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Israel Museum, Library of Congress, and the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans, among others. He lives and works in New York City.