Winter Street Gallery is pleased to present On Genres, a group exhibition that takes a look at 17th century genres in painting through a contemporary and multidisciplinary lens. The show features new and recent work by Farah Al Qasimi, Lotte Andersen, Michel Auder, Russell Banx, Ronan Day-Lewis, Asher Liftin, Sergio Miguel, Aura Rosenberg, Andrew Sendor, Georgina Treviño, and Nicole Wittenberg. In the wake of the Italian Renaissance, art academies formalized a hierarchy of genres in painting with “the notion of man being the measure of all things.” Historical and religious paintings were deemed to hold the most prestige and cultural value, followed by portraits, genre scenes, landscapes, animals, and lastly, still life. Today, categorization in art has become increasingly nonlinear as new media and alternative discourse surrounding the Western-centric art canon have dismantled the boundaries of established art hierarchies.

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Expanding the framework beyond painting, the exhibition includes installation, sculpture, video, and photography. Across the works presented, historical genres are alluded to in the form of a video triptych and lenticular prints; portraits are revealed within puzzles and ornate frames. Features of genre scenes are transported into the 21st century with images of iPhone screens and paintings of contemporary suburbia. Landscapes are abstracted and distilled representations of flora, while animals take the form of spirit-like creatures and pet lizards. Still lifes take pixelated and warped form as an installation reveals a highly ornamental dinner table for viewers to relish in.

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