BRIC Partners with Dekalb Market Hall on Large Scale Mural Project

BRIC has partneredwith DeKalb Market Hall (445 Albee Square West, Brooklyn), the borough's largest market hall and culinary center, to install large-scale murals by Brooklyn-based visual artists. Columbian artist Tatiana Arocha, who is best known for placing hundreds of bird cut-outs throughout the borough as a public art commentary on climate change; Nigerian-born Olalekan Jeyifous, whose 50-foot "Crown Ether" sculpture was featured at this year's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival; and Cern, whose Fort Greene "Comandante Biggie" mural paid controversial homage to the late rapper Biggie Smalls, have each created a mural that will remain on view indefinitely at DeKalb Market Hall.

The murals are on view during public hours, Sundays through Wednesdays, 11AM-9PM, and Thursdays through Saturdays, 11AM-10PM.

Located a short walk from DeKalb Market Hall, BRIC is the leading presenter of free cultural programming in Brooklyn. The organization's contemporary art program presents exhibitions and events that focus on Brooklyn-based artists whose work captures a rich cross-section of ideas, voices and artistic media, and reflect Brooklyn's rich diversity. The murals are installed along select walls of the food hall and near elevators located at the Albee Square entrance of the City Point Building in Downtown Brooklyn, which houses DeKalb Market.

Elizabeth Ferrer, Vice President of Contemporary Art at BRIC, shared, "It was a goal of this project that artists with diverse styles and themes be included. The selected artists well reflect some of the values embodied by the Market itself: Olalekan Jeyifous's mural is a utopian vision of urbanity, Tatiana Arocha's mural takes the theme of diversity and the natural environment, and Cern's mural riffs off street art, bringing the city itself into the food hall. It is a great pleasure to partner with Anna Castellani and the team at DeKalb Market Hall."

With these murals, Dekalb Market Hall complements their world-class dining experience with an artful atmosphere, in service of their aim to "raise Brooklyn's profile as a hub of innovative cooking and dining experiences." The food hall features over 40 vendors, including iconic New York names such as Katz's Delicatessen, Ample Hills Creamery, Arepa Lady, Fletcher's BBQ and more. The Hall is also home to a show kitchen, a cocktail bar and daily live entertainment.

DIVERSIDAD and Tucanes baja el sol are digital prints with gold paint by artist Tatiana Arocha. Inspired by her childhood journeys into Colombia's rainforests with her anthropologist father, Arocha's mural style stems from a desire to celebrate the landscape's astounding biodiversity. Her immersive murals surround the viewer with a nature that is mostly monochromatic, a color palette that references historic naturalist engravings and warns of a future in which the rainforest exists only in the past. Arocha layers specific birds, insects and fern leaves on top of a landscape made of found images that she digitally manipulates to create a scene that is imaginatively dense. By installing depictions of nature in urban settings, Arocha's murals draw parallels between the diverse ecosystems of Colombia and the cultural flourishing of Brooklyn today.

Steeped in the eco-political ideology and activism of "solarpunk," Olalekan Jeyifous creates large-scale digital renderings that translate the existing architectural language of neighborhoods into colossal vertical statements. A "high-fidelity" interpretation of the De Stijl Dutch art movement's iconic combination of geometric forms and primary colors, Jeyifous' installation is palpably playful. With bright, elementary colors and large geometric structures, the work visually evokes the architecture of a playground or a child's building blocks. In the simplest sections of the mural, affixations between structures are visible and obvious. Yet these simple connectors are adjoined to more sophisticated buildings where hinges, bolts, and wheels disappear, making way for complex architecture. Described by Jeyifous as a mash-up of invented architecture and vintage stereo design, Hifi De Stijl's imaginative landscape feels at once recognizable and fantastical.

Cern created Remembrance of Nature with acrylic, water, graphite and India ink. The mural at DeKalb Market Hall reflects on the role technology plays within our daily routines by blending exaggerated figures into an amorphous, brightly colored background. The artist's signature watercolor technique with India ink highlights the "accidental" drips of the graffiti process, grounding the work within the medium but never letting the viewer fully immerse themselves within the landscape.

About the Artists

Tatiana Arocha is a Brooklyn-based artist whose artistic practice includes mural, collage, printmaking and video. Her work has been shown recently at BLDG 92, The Vazquez Building, and the SONYA Art Walk, all in Brooklyn; the Queens Botanic Garden; the Max L. Jackson Gallery, Charlotte, NC; and Casa 9.69, Bogotá, Columbia. Arocha will exhibit work at BRIC House in 2018.

Olalekan Jeyifous is a Brooklyn-based sculptor, muralist and installation artist. His work has been shown in group exhibitions most recently in the BRIC Biennial: Volume II, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Kitchen, the New Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park, and the Museum of Modern Art, all in NY. He has shown internationally at the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany and the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain. Jeyifous holds a BFA in Architecture from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

Cern is a self-taught artist originally from Queens. His array of murals can be seen throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan, as well as in Rockaway Beach, NY; Jersey City, NJ; and Miami, FL. His work has been featured at BRIC House; the San Diego Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Museu Brasileiro De Escultura, São Paulo, Brazil. He has also produced murals internationally in Ireland, and South Africa, and he is the recipient of Art Battle's "King of New York" title. His collaborative work is recognizable to any Fort Greene resident used to seeing the Biggie mural on South Portland Street.

About BRIC

BRIC is the leading presenter of free cultural programming in Brooklyn, and one of the largest in New York City. We present and incubate work by artists and media-makers who reflect the diversity that surrounds us. BRIC programs reach hundreds of thousands of people each year.

Our main venue, BRIC Arts | Media House, offers a public media center, a major contemporary art exhibition space, two performance spaces, a glass-walled TV studio, and artist work spaces.

Some of BRIC's most acclaimed programs include the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival in Prospect Park, several path-breaking public access media initiatives, including BRIC TV, and a renowned contemporary art exhibition series. BRIC also offers education and other vital programs at BRIC House and throughout Brooklyn.

In addition to making cultural programming genuinely accessible, BRIC is dedicated to providing substantial support to artists and media makers in their efforts to develop work and reach new audiences.

BRIC is unusual in both presenting exceptional cultural experiences and nurturing individual expression. This dual commitment enables us to most effectively reflect New York City's innate cultural richness and diversity.

Learn more at BRICartsmedia.org.

Support for BRIC

BRIC's contemporary art program benefits from generous private funding from Alloy, Astoria Bank, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, The Bay and Paul Foundations, Bloomingdale's, City Point, Con Edison, Deutsche Bank, The Educational Foundation of America, Ford Foundation, Forest City Ratner Companies, The Hearst Foundations, Lambent Foundation, The Robert Lehman Foundation, , The New York Community Trust, the Oppenheim Family Fund, TD Bank, Tiger Baron Foundation, Pia and Jimmy Zankel, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, as well as numerous individual supporters.

Generous public support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts; the Institute of Museum and Library Services; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl; Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams; the Brooklyn Delegation of the New York City Council; New York City Council Members Inez Barron, Robert Cornegy, Laurie Cumbo, Mathieu Eugene, Vincent Gentile, Brad Lander, Stephen Levin, Darlene Mealy, Mark Treyger, and Jumaane Williams.

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