RAE • “THE END STARTS NOW”  • 2018 • Brooklyn, New York

"NY Artist RAE Combines the Bizarre with the Everyday Hustle of Coney Island, Brooklyn”

[Brooklyn, New York, September 22 - October 13, 2018] - Last stop-- Coney Island. On the edge of Brooklyn, and the outskirts of a city teeming with millions of struggles and victories, sits an eclectic amusement park for the ages and the perfect backdrop for the artist RAE and his newest venture, “The End Starts Now”.  

As a dedicated child of Brooklyn, RAE flashes back to the days when he would venture beyond the chaos and cluster of the high-rise project blocks into the salty-sweet air of Coney Island, a place for kids to have unabashed fun, sprinkled with elements of the bizarre, underground subcultures and seedy side streets rolled into one.  

Colorful and precarious at the same time, RAE's pop-infused paintings and found-object sculptures reflect the areas cultural juxtapositions.  The vibrancy and childish lines that run throughout his work are reminiscent of the twists and turns of a ride on the Cyclone, while his characters and their cryptic expressions, always seeming to be up to something, peer at the viewer, never fully at ease but still at home in their surroundings.  Made from cast-off materials he finds while drifting along the back streets and behind the amusement park rides, RAE's sculptures combine visions of playfulness, sorrow and regret, bringing new life to the incidentals of the daily hustle in the form of these 'trophies of the repurposed'.