Biography

American artist Matthew Grabelsky, for whose works the New York subway is the set, creates unlikely juxtapositions bringing together hyper realistic painting techniques and surrealism. His work was featured as a part of the opening of URBAN NATION Museum in 2017.

Raised in New York, the subway’s underground world of the city became the setting for Matthew Grabelsky’s portraits of couples, in which mostly the male figure is a mythological human hybrid with an animal’s head. Deer, elephants or tigers in rush hour ‘contrast the platitudes of the day-to-day with the presence of the extraordinary’. 19th century academic and naturalist painters and show surreal scenes with realistic detail technically inspire Grabelsky’s work. The artist describes the presence of animal heads as ’lurking beyond the composure of the human mask’. Grabelsky is also known for his cover artwork, e.g. for Moby, and he exhibited in America and Europe.