Kustera Projects presents Eric Mistretta “Bad Doctor”

Eric Mistretta’s work fuses elements of language and imagery taken from popular culture to create visual hybrids that resonate with a sense of strangeness and absurdity. For his exhibition at Kustera Projects, Mistretta will create an immersive environment that he likens to “the waiting room of a very unorthodox doctor’s office”. Mistretta will adorn the space with a combination of paintings, drawings, and sculptures – intended to calm the imagined patient with well-meaning logic, but ultimately unsettling them before their impending “visit”.  In a recent series of paintings and drawings, jovial and simplistic depictions of fruit are juxtaposed alongside text insinuating a somewhat ominous narrative.  The fruit – rendered in a way reminiscent of the innocuous imagery that might adorn a cheap, mass-marketed tablecloth or placemat – acts as a kind of well-meaning but insufficient offering or condolence for the unfavorable news being delivered.   In a new sculptural series, wall-mounted shelves serve as displays for volumes of books that have been crafted out of wood and paint. Vinyl lettering on their covers and spines hint at content that doesn’t actually exist.  Mistretta’s work facilitates the relationship between comedy and tragedy, highlighting a scenario in which the two forces ultimately depend on each other.

Eric Mistretta was born in Queens, New York, in 1985, and received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2012. His work has been featured in multiple group exhibitions including the inaugural “Virgins Show” curated by Marilyn Minter at Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni’s Family Business Gallery, Mon Cheri Gallery in Brussels, and Anna Kustera Gallery in New York. In 2013, Mistretta was selected as the artist in residence for the F_AIR Residency program in Florence, Italy, where he had his first solo exhibition. A subsequent residency in Faenza, Italy, culminated in a solo exhibition which placed his work in multiple venues around the city, including the International Museum of Ceramics and the Museo Carlo Zauli. In January 2015 Mistretta had his first New York solo exhibition at Scaramouche Gallery on the Lower East Side.  He lives and works in Queens, NY.