RAW NYC 2010

Press Release

Exhibition Explores Everyday Magic in the Streets of New York RAWnyc: The Corners Project meets The Street is in the House” a celebration of the unseen magic of the everyday

May 14 – 23, 2010 New York  186 Orchard presents “RAWnyc: the unseen magic of the everyday”, May 14 throughout May 23, 2010.

This exhibition explores the beauty and stories that hide behind the most unexpected aspects of everyday life in New York: the street furniture and the faces of strangers that walk its streets. Admission is free.

Beautiful and ingenious, provocative yet touching, RAWnyc is the combination of two independent projects by former admen and colleagues Carlo Sampietro and Friko Starc.

Carlo Sampietro’s The Street is in the House infuses discarded materials from the streets of New York with new life: a vintage taxi cab light is transformed into FM radio lamp, a police barrier serves as a base of an elegant dining table and a free newspaper dispenser that becomes a fish tank for piranhas are just some examples of how the artist combines wit and functionality. His work blurs the boundaries between what belongs to the street and what belongs in the home and continues with that motif by creating art to be useful in the contemporary home.

Friko’s The Corners Project is a collection of candid portraits of unsuspecting strangers as they went about their lives in 5 carefully chosen corners of the city. In this work, Manhattan is not a concrete jungle, but as a human zoo where the only common denominator is the certitude that here lie greater possibilities than anywhere else. From Wall st. on the week of Lehman Bros. demise to Chinatown, Chelsea, the L.E.S. and East Harlem, The Corners Project is a celebration of the amazing diversity of ethnicities, ambitions and purposes that fuel this unique city.

On May 18 at 8pm a reception party and book signing event will be held at 186 Orchard street in celebration of the launch of The Corners Project book and The Street is in the House presence at the 2010 International Contemporary Furniture Fair.

General Information: 186 Orchard Art Gallery, 186 Orchard st, Lower East Side, New York, NY 10002 Hours:!Friday-Sat: 11am–1am, Mon-Thu: 11am-11pm

RSVP and general info: rawnewyork@gmail.com