Taking a leading position on what an office can be, the Yard delights both tenants and visitors with its newest art exhibition, Static Beauty, curated by Ché Morales.
Being on the vanguard of providing eccentric, productive, and fun workspaces for New York’s picky startup clientele is easy if you’re smart like the Yard is. It’s one thing to keep the place clean, organized, and friendly but completely another to make the office a place you want to get out of bed for. The Yard is unique in this way as it serves not only as a perfect incubator for your next million-dollar idea, but also as a vessel to build community networks, enjoy prime location city views, and contemplate museum ready artwork from the next generation of creators.
Entrance to the Yard’s unique OFFICES
“Static Beauty” premieres 33 stunning new artworks by the illustrious Pajtim Osmanaj. His polychromatic paintings are executed in a style unique to him that transcend his own personal experiences, nostalgia for his native Kosovo, and describe nuanced memories that culminate in a haptic symphony of mesmerizing elegance. The frames, which look so three dimensional they almost invite you to walk into them, depict a non-space, or imaginary site that echo Osmanaj’s mountainous homeland that is both blessed with an expansive beauty and cursed with tragedy:
Osmanaj: Often I paint what look like “bloody rivers” or “bloody fields” – the idea is because in my country there’s all the time a big war between other countries. My people have been continuing with these problems and being killed by other people for territory. Kosovo has a long history of blood and wars so that’s why I use these reddish colors on these cold stones. I was there in wartime and these were the feelings I had.
#osmanaj
But a moody or somber abstraction of Kosovian mountains they are not. These epic rock faces transmit a sense of power, authority, and unmovable grace; just as a Thomas Cole landscape conveys a similar sentiment of a stormy yet tumultuous beauty, so too Osmanaj’s lands contain their own aesthetic violence.
Everything you see here is rooted in my life. The pain, the war, the joy, the beautiful times just looking out into the mountains dreaming. I try to put everything into my work. That’s what I was trying to show through those colors. I wanted to say that this is a story of my country, my people, my own story. – Osmanaj
The powerhouse curator that first recognized the inherent value in Osmanaj’s work is none other than the flaneur we all wish we were ourselves: Ché Morales. Don’t let his debonair charm fool you, for as easy as he makes it look, the self-imposed challenge of filling the Yard’s 15,000 sq.ft space with one single artist whose pieces allowed it’s audiences to meditate on broader life topics while having a productive work day, was executed in a fashion paralleled to no prior curator:
It’s really easy to put a group show together if you know a lot of artists but it’s rare to find an artist with enough work to fill a show and space like this. I think it’s stronger to have a solo show, I think it tells a bigger deeper story. We’re going to have talks here, programming around it, we’re selling merchandise; this is not your regular show where people come to drink wine and leave.
MORALES and OSMANAJ #genius
Ultimately, Morales gives the credit back to the Yard, whose team and mission have inspired him since day one. In his words, it was their innovative hospitality that elevated his own goals for the show.
“I’ve worked at some other Yards and they’re really invested in their people. That’s what gets me even more excited. It’s like a challenge to try and fit the space in a way that’s just right. People are coming here to work so I ask myself: what’s the mood that I’m going to set with them? These guys went out of their way to make this happen. And look around…” – Morales
…As Vodka and mixed drinks poured with an open smile, as the dinner was mawed down by a group of startup CEO’s and employees alongside artists and friends. Office doors were left open, schedules put on hold, pens capped and put down all to join the palpable sense of togetherness, a refreshing phenomenon in professional New York, well, unless you’re lucky enough to work at the Yard.
#partyintheyard
