Walk along 6th St downtown these days and you may find yourself  immersed in a forty foot panoramic B&W mural created by Windsor Square artist Fritz Chesnut exhibited on an exterior wall of the Standard Hotel. Titled “Dark Wave / Phase Transition” the forty by eight foot installation combines amorphous, almost psychedelic, yet natural forms into a long flowing stream that could be a massive view of galaxies in an immense universe, or perhaps a tiny drop of oil in water, magnified a million fold.
In fact, the digitally printed mural originates from a 3 x 3 foot painting Chesnut created in his signature format: pouring paint on a horizontal canvas. As the paint coalesces, he gets involved: lifting and tilting the canvas so that gravity moves the paint creating “pools, ravines and fields of color – often alluding to waves, oil spills and other aquatic and geologic formations.”
“It’s very simple, yet very complicated understanding how the paint is going to mix,” Chesnut told the Buzz during the installation of the mural last Wednesday on the north side of 6th Street. “This is the first time I’ve done something on such a large scale.” He worked with Olson Visual out of Hawthorne, which printed the large format print onto an adhesive backing and was carefully unfurling it onto the well-lit cement wall. The piece will be on exhibit  at the Standard Hotel until May 10th, thanks to the gallery Country Club Projects.
Chesnut has lived with his wife, actress Molly Shannon (Saturday Night Live) and two children in Windsor Square for the past two years after moving here from New York.
Visit the artist’s website.
Yay Fritz! We can’t wait to go see it up close.