Justin Allen’s discarded food packaging and gums are firmly set within the urban fabric. The street isn’t for him a mere background, but a crucial element in his carefully composed dystopian still lives. The strip of scrubland in Beautiful Day Sidewalk (2008-2009) has something of a Constructivist motif. It gives the painting dynamism and direction. It also adds a narrative element, a context to this chunk of pavement painted like an icon. The idea of relics runs throughout these paintings. Archaeologist of the everyday, Allen retrieves the traces of our existence and turns them into symbols.

Justin Allen’s past exhibitions include Justin Allen: Small Paintings, (2009), Robert Miller Gallery, New York; All Too Human, Young American Painters (2009), Schuebbe Projects, Dusseldorf, Germany; Backyard (2009) Sam Lee Gallery, Los Angeles and Size Matters, Recent Small Scale Paintings (2007), Hudson Valley Center of Contemporary Art which toured to Knoxville Museum of Art (2008). Allen was born in 1976 and lives and works in New York