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Peter Rostovsky fastidiously crafts sculptures and delicately executes paintings exploring the impasses that haunt "historical memory" and utopian imagination. Rostovsky hones in on historical and contemporary symbols of societal hopes and aspirations with his re-worked renditions of exhausted artistic genres, such as landscape painting, monumental sculpture and kitsch iconography. Cleverly approaching the deeply rooted problematics of these antiquated genres, Rostovsky exposes the absurdity of searching for heroes and epiphany through images of grandeur.
Rostovsky's work for the Commons at MetroTech is based upon the traditional heroic monument. His project, titled the Anti-Hero Monument, is a sculptural installation that attempts to comically memorialize the spirit of heroic rebellion and the ordinary person through two faux-bronze sculptures. From the largest piece, which is
10' high and situated at the center of the Commons area, to the smallest which is virtually at ground level, the
piece shows a dramatically elongated cliff mounted by a tiny figurine. The viewer is thus provided with all the
dramatic build up of heroic sculpture only to be led to identify with a miniscule protagonist, a toy-like figure.
The Anti-Hero Monument turns bronze statuary, a staple of any leisurely walk in a manicured park, on its head, replacing the illustrious individual with the everyman.
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