October 24, 6 pm: Launch introduction by the curator
OSMOS Address, 50 East 1st Street, Manhattan, NYC
October 24 to 29, 7 to 9 pm Nightly
First Park, 33 East 1st Street, Manhattan, NYC
October 29, 9 pm: Closing conversation with the artist
OSMOS Address, 50 East 1st Street, Manhattan, NYC
First Street Green in partnership with OSMOS is proud to present Residual Images, a collection of storm battered photographs by Michael Redpath.
The images capture a 9/11 first responder’s records of the destruction in Lower Manhattan, that were transformed a decade later by the murky flood waters of Hurricane Sandy. On the afternoon of September 11th 2001, Michael Redpath, a FDNY firefighter with Ladder 169 in Brighton Beach, was dispatched to the ruins of the World Trade Center. “The first thing that struck me was the silence,” said Redpath. “Everything was covered with this ash. Everything was white. It was almost like a silent black and white movie.” Starting just hours after the collapse of the towers and continuing for several months throughout the recovery effort at Ground Zero, Redpath made hundreds of photographs of the unimaginable destruction and tremendous effort required to return chaos to relative normalcy. For more than a decade, Redpath’s archive of stunning images was stored away in the basement of his home in the Rockaways until October 29th 2012 when Hurricane Sandy flooded, rendering his possessions trash and irreversibly altering his negatives to fossilize the two tragic events.
OSMOS invites the public to view these powerful, cathartic, and never before exhibited artifacts depicting first responders atop twisted steel surrounded by psychedelic splotches, inverted colors and abstract water spots on corroded emulsion. From October 24 to 29, nightly 7 to 9 pm, a slide show curated by Niko Koppel will be projected as public art on an exterior wall at First Park. The event will start and end at OSMOS Address where visitors will have an opportunity to meet the artist and curator.
Mike Redpath (born 1963, Brooklyn), a FDNY firefighter, earned a BFA fine arts degree (Graphic Arts) from New York Institute of Technology. He moved to Breezy Point at age 10 and has resided in Rockaway for 30 years.
Niko Koppel (born 1984, Chicago) received a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. He is the Metropolitan photo editor for the New York Times.
OSMOS functions as an integrated concept for curatorial and editorial activities, featuring emerging, established and overlooked artists and photographers. OSMOS Address is a project space for art gatherings, publications, and exhibitions in the East Village storefront that was a saloon frequented by Emma Goldman and other radicals at 50 East 1st Street in Manhattan.
First Street Green provides cultural programming in First Park at 33 E. 1st Street in Manhattan. Through their efforts First Park has become an open art space that serves the Lower East Side community by engaging with contemporary artists, designers, architects, community groups and cultural institutions through a series of programs that activate this public space.
Residual Images will be on view October 24th through October 29th, nightly from 7 to 9 pm.
For more information, please contact Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, +1 917 859 7104, [email protected]
