Lawrence Beck, a Riverdale resident for many years, photographed the dense undergrowth in nearby Riverdale Park, Van Cortlandt Park, and the area along the Henry Hudson Parkway for his Thicket series. These large black and white photographs convey immense walls of unchecked growth. On one hand, the all-over approach to the composition is reminiscent of abstract expressionist painting. However, Beck gives form and composition to tangles of invasive vines, presenting them on a human scale, with a suggestion of an intimate connection between the view and the place. In recent years the thickets of Riverdale Park have been transformed each summer through the intensive clearing efforts of Wave Hill’s Forest Project Summer Collaborative.

Beck has explored controlled nature in a series of water lilies, and unbounded nature in a waterfalls series. His photographs have been exhibited widely with one-person exhibitions at Sonnabend Gallery, New York, NY; Seomi Gallery, Seoul, Korea; August Sandler Foundation, Cologne, Germany; Galerie Rodolfe Janssen, Brussels, Belgium; Karyn Lovegrove Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; and Metropolis, Lyon, France. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including Picturing Central Park at the Central Park Conservancy, New York, NY; Images of Time and Place: Contemporary Views of Landscape, Lehman College, Bronx, NY; and Landscape X3, ProjexMtl galerie, Montreal, Canada.

More information can be found at www.sonnabendgallery.com.