Do you all remember this classic Recon tee? Well this is the “Old New York” they were referring to. Peter Feigenbaum, who some of you may recognize from modern-day kraut rockers Dinowalrus has been busy recreating that vibe in his Trainset Ghetto photography and installation project. He builds these very photo-realistic models of 1980s era NYC slums and photographs them in strange scenarios.

You can check out a gallery of images featuring these small instillations over at Like the Spice. Really incredible looking stuff that flood me back to memories of my youth… especially to what Williamsburg used to look like!

He’s going to be doing a solo exhibition at Open Source Gallery in Park Slope this september!  Its quite a ways off, but I thought I’d give you early warning, as it would be great to see you at the opening.  If not, the show runs thru the end of September.

Trainset Ghetto is voyeurism more than it is hobbyism. It is the physical byproduct of teenage suburban daydreams and attempts to live vicariously through an alien post-urban 1980s landscape that was in no way part of my quotidian existence–a landscape that I caught glimpses of through car rides down the Bruckner Expressway, Henry Chalfant’s graffiti photographs, and movies such as “The French Connection” and “Style Wars”. But this odd juxtaposition of lifestyles is a well-hidden text. I make few overt attempts to exploit this perverse juxtaposition of place and social circumstance in my photographs. Rather, the primary emphasis is always “setting the scene” in a hyper-real, trompe l’oeil manner. Unlike other “scene-setting” photographers like James Cassebere, who works with hazy spatial ambiance, or Gregory Crewdson, who creates uncanny cinematic narratives, Trainset Ghetto is concerned primarily with hyper-realism via an attention to small mundane details of the urban architectural vernacular.

Trainset Ghetto is a by-product of the virtual urban spatial realms that defined my teenage experience in the 1990s-virtual realms found in video games ranging from Sim City to Duke Nuke ‘Em to Grand Theft Auto. The motivation to create Trainset Ghetto was cultivated by experiences in these virtual realms. Additionally, there was a desire to objectify these spatial experiences-a desire that could only be fulfilled via miniaturization, a process in which inhabitable spaces become tangible objects. While artists such as Corey Arcangel have responded to the digital realm of the 1990s using similarly digital means, Trainset Ghetto uses anachronistic, analogue means–the age-old pseudo-craft of model railroading.

I’m totally blown away by some of these and am really looking forward to the show even if it’s about a month away. In the meantime why not read an interview we did with Peter about his band Dinowalrus.

the show opens Saturday, September 4th and will run until September 30th. There will be an opening reception on the 4th from 7-10pm and who knows maybe Dinowalrus will even play?

Saturday September 4th, 7-10pm
Open Source
255 17th St. (Btwn 5th & 6th Ave)
Brooklyn, NY

- My Pal the Crook