Tellurian Traversals

Cezar Mocan and Robert Polidoro

PUTTY'S CORONATION is pleased to announce the opening of Tellurian Traversals, a group exhibition featuring the work of Cezar Mocan and Robert Polidoro at Putty’s Coronation on 483 17th St, 4B, Brooklyn, NY 11215 from November 18th - December 16th, 2023.

Tellurian Traversals brings together two fresh visions to the traditions of landscape. Cezar Mocan and Rob Polidoro update and reinterpret the traditional genre of the landscape. Though radically different in approach, both visions explore how the artificial and organic merge to create new forms where technology and nature coexist in uncanny harmony.

In Cezar Mocan’s World Upstream, an emergent, more-than-human community is in a perpetual process of reclaiming a decaying hydroelectric dam and transforming it into a site for leisure. Using AI and gaming engines to create a futuristic scene reminiscent of A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Mocan creates a world where different intelligences interact and evolve within their natural environment. The simulated protagonists—a sentient poplar tree, a group of quadruplets, an AI-powered Dyson vacuum, among others—co-exist in a never-ending picnic upstream of the dam, tending to their individual and collective needs by engaging in mundane, social, and futile behaviors as a way of rewilding their natural surroundings.

For Tellurian Traversals, Rob Polidoro presents a series of paintings and pastel drawings depicting lush psychedelic landscapes and still lives. Based loosely in the natural world, Polidoro’s images appear to have gone through a metamorphosis into otherworldly mutations. With vibrant colors and smooth rounded forms, each image projects a posthumous world where everything seems to possess rhythm and balance.

Robert Polidoro was born in 1994 in Manhattan, NY. He holds a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. He has previously exhibited at Marvin Gardens (New York, NY), and The Other Art Fair (New York, NY), among others. He lives in Brooklyn NY, and works in Queens, NY.

Cezar Mocan is a Lisbon-based artist and computer programmer interested in the interplay between technology and the natural landscape. His past works have been exhibited with Office Impart (Berlin), Inter/Access (Toronto), SPRING BREAK Art Show (New York), Currents New Media (Santa Fe), Plexus Projects (New York), BASE (Istanbul), Romanian Design Week (Bucharest), and the New York University. His real-time simulation work, Arcadia Inc. was recognized as a 2021 winner of the Lumen Prize in Art and Technology. Cezar holds a B.S. in Computer Science (2016) from Yale University and an M.P.S. in Interactive Telecommunications (2021) from New York University.