Jade Doskow

Freshkills

September 17 – October 30, 2021

Large format color photograph of rusty dumpster with reflection of trees by Jade Doskow

Jade Doskow

The New Wilderness, Freshkills, 2019/2021

Archival pigment print

50h x 60w in
127h x 152.40w cm

JD_031

Landscape image of Freshkills Park with Stormwater structure by Jade Doskow

Jade Doskow

New Roads and Stormwater Structure, West Mound, 2021

Archival pigment print

40h x 50w in
101.60h x 127w cm, Edition of 5

Additional sizes available

JD_029

Jade Doskow  Fox Den, East Mound, 2021  Archival pigment print  40h x 50w in 101.60h x 127w cm, Epic landscape photograph, with a low horizon line and expansive blue sky with clouds. The lower image is of a green grassy hillock enveloping a methane extraction well where a fox has made a den

Jade Doskow

Fox Den, East Mound, 2021

Archival pigment print

40h x 50w in, Edition of 5
101.60h x 127w cm

Additional sizes available

 

JD_030

Jade Doskow  Landscape, Freshkills (After Bruegel), 2018  Archival pigment print  40h x 50w in 101.60h x 127w cm, industrial landscape in winter reminiscent to works by Peter Bruegel the elder, rust colored grass in the foreground punctuated by a winding river, multiple bridges and smoke stacks in the backgroung

Jade Doskow

Landscape, Freshkills (After Bruegel), 2018

Archival pigment print

40h x 50w in
101.60h x 127w cm

Edition of 5

JD_028

Jade Doskow  Volunteer Trees, Winter, 2021  Archival pigment print  40h x 30w in 101.60h x 76.20w cm, white monochromatic snowy landscape with a lone, bare tree as the central figure

Jade Doskow

Volunteer Trees, Winter, 2021

Archival pigment print

40h x 30w in
101.60h x 76.20w cm

Edition of 5

Additional sizes available

JD_027

ade Doskow  Leachate Plant – Veteran’s Avenue Laboratory, 2020/2021  Archival pigment print  30h x 40w in 76.20h x 101.60w cm, interior industrial image of a laboratory in a Leachate plant, wooden counters with white machinery

Jade Doskow

Leachate Plant – Veteran’s Avenue Laboratory, 2020/2021

Archival pigment print

30h x 40w in
76.20h x 101.60w cm

Edition of 5

Additional sizes available

JD_026

Jade Doskow  Leachate Treatment Plant Rooftop, 2019/2021  Archival pigment print  30h x 40w in,

Jade Doskow

Leachate Treatment Plant Rooftop, 2019/2021

Archival pigment print

30h x 40w in
76.20h x 101.60w cm

Edition of 5

Additional sizes available

JD_024

Jade Doskow  Interior Road Encircling South Mound, Early Winter, Freshkills, 2019/2021  Archival pigment print  40h x 50w in, large scale landscape with low horizon line, light blue sky contrasted with rust colored ground, tufts of trees along the horizon line

Jade Doskow

Interior Road Encircling South Mound, Early Winter, Freshkills, 2019/2021

Archival pigment print

40h x 50w in
101.60h x 127w cm

Edition of 5

Additional sizes available

JD_025

Jade Doskow  North Mound, Winter, 2019/2021  Archival pigment print  30h x 40w in, winter, snowy landscape of the north mound, very textural with sprouts of brown plants filling in the hill. There is a series of bare trees along the very high horizon line

Jade Doskow

North Mound, Winter, 2019/2021

Archival pigment print

30h x 40w in
76.20h x 101.60w cm

Edition of 5

Additional sizes available

JD_023

Jade Doskow  New York City Skyline with One World Trade from North Mound, Looking Northeast toward Main Creek and the Greenbelt, Autumn, 2018/2021  Archival pigment print  50h x 60w in, large scale epic landscape with  the NYC skyline visible in the distance

Jade Doskow

New York City Skyline with One World Trade from North Mound, Looking Northeast toward Main Creek and the Greenbelt, Autumn, 2018/2021

Archival pigment print

50h x 60w in
127h x 152.40w cm

Edition of 5

Additional sizes available

JD_022

Gallery installation view of large-format, color photographs of Freshkills Park by Jade Doskow
Gallery installation view of large-format, color photographs of Freshkills Park by Jade Doskow
Gallery installation view of large-format, color photographs of Freshkills Park by Jade Doskow

Press Release

Tracey Morgan Gallery is pleased to present Jade Doskow: Freshkills, a new exhibition of photographs taken at Staten Island’s Freshkills Park. Reception for the artist, Friday September 17, 6-8PM.

In operation from 1948-2001, Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island became the largest household garbage dump globally, receiving 150 million tons of New York City’s solid waste during that time. Staten Islanders fought to have the site closed for years, tired of living with the noxious odors and the notoriety the site created for their borough. Agreements between the State and City were made in the 1990’s to close Fresh Kills for once and for all and the last barge of garbage was accepted on March 22, 2001. The only time it was reopened was to accept materials from the World Trade Center tragedy in Manhattan in 2001, rendering a portion of the site historically significant into the future. It was in the early 2000’s that the conceptualization of landfill to wilderness park entered the civic conversation, and thus began a radical transformation. Now known as Freshkills, it is to date the largest landfill-to-park transformation on the planet.

Doskow’s large-scale photographs of the iconic New York landfill-turned-park make clear its’ paradoxical, ethereal beauty, while creating an important archive of a major chapter within the story of New York City’s infrastructure. Influenced by the Westward expansion photographs of Carleton Watkins, 1970’s land artists such as Agnes Denes, the writings of Helen MacDonald, Karl Ove Knausgård, Haruki Murakami, and James Joyce, the works on display reflect the scope of the natural and unnatural systems at play in this unique, layered landscape. In The New Wilderness, we see a forest, inverted within captured rainwater inside a long-out-of-use dumpster, while within the structure of the dumpster itself a mini-ecosystem has taken root. In East Mound, a fox has built its den within the curved, small hillock constructed to envelope a methane extraction well. The topography of the site--undulating and sculpted by Sanitation engineers and through Doskow’s lens--offers its complexity through her careful and probing large-format work, playing with scale and form, abstraction and figuration. In New York City Skyline with One World Trade from North Mound, Looking Northeast, the downtown New York City skyline is visible, conveying the geographic proximity between Freshkills and the greater city beyond. Doskow’s photographs highlight the immense complexity of Freshkills, both the luminous, open, meadows as well as the highly engineered systems enabling this modern wilderness to function.

During this time of climate catastrophe, Freshkills Park offers a compelling (albeit complicated and imperfect), ultimately optimistic view of how visionary urban planners can take a landscape that has been completely destroyed and resurrect it, literally transforming the garbage of the U.S.’s most populous city and creating grasslands replete with rare species of flora and fauna, rolling hills dotted with flowers, and waterways once again attracting marine life. Doskow’s work asks us as such: if 2,200 acres of New York City’s household waste can be transformed into glorious meadowlands and woodlands, what else is possible?

Based in New York, Jade Doskow holds a BA from New York University and an MFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts. She is on the photography faculty of the  International Center of Photography and the City University of New York. Her work has been featured and reviewed internationally, including The New York Times, Photograph, Wired, Smithsonian, Slate, and Newsweek Japan. 

All press inquiries, please contact china@traceymorgangallery.com