Hrag Vartanian

Since Hurricane Katrina, refuse and squalor have inspired a popular aesthetic in the art world. There’s a laissez-faire decadence in a work like Peter Garfied‘s “One: Number 31, 1950” (2008) sculpture at Pierogi Brooklyn (below).

These artworks of devastation all seem to reference (even if unwittingly) Jeff Wall’s stunning and prescient photograph from 1978, “The Destroyed Room” (below).

Jeff Wall has said:

My first pictures like “The Destroyed Room” emerged from a re-encounter with nineteenth-century art.