Leopold Strobl: Underneath

An exhibition of small drawings by the Austrian artist Leopold Strobl, titled "Leopold Strobl: Underneath", held in Gallery Two of the Ricco/Maresca Gallery, presented both in person and online. Strobl, born in 1960 in Mistelbach, Lower Austria, has attended the open studio program at the Gugging Art Brut center for more than two decades, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired five of his works in 2018. His works begin with photographs clipped from local newspapers, which he mounts on drawing paper and transforms through graphite and layered color, turning architectural details, roads, horizon lines, woods, and bodies into dense graphite formations resembling boulders, mountain peaks, waves, pods, or prehistoric eggs. The resulting scenes are at once familiar and uncanny, creating a world of equilibrium and transformation where every tiny image opens onto a remarkably expansive space.