NEW YORK.-The hustle and bustle of urban commuters in transit is captured in Paper Passages: Collages by Chris Pelletiere, opening May 8, 2007, at the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn Heights. The twenty-two works on exhibit through September 3, 2007 depict familiar New York City commuter scenes in overlays of newspaper clippings, bits of colored paper, and photographic images, generating a sense of motion and energy while capturing colorful moments of today’s busy travelers.

Paper Passages: Collages by Chris Pelletiere, the first complete presentation of this series of subway collages, was inspired by charcoal sketches executed in the fall of 2003 during the artist’s commute from his home in New Jersey to his job at the Museum of Modern Art, in Manhattan. The charcoal renderings slowly evolved over time, as he added bits of newsprint, tissue paper and other printed materials to the drawings. From a distance, the scenes portray commuters walking through turnstiles, standing in groups on platforms, boarding trains and buses and riding escalators. Upon closer inspection these disparate fragments take on new life, as images within images emerge, and scenes evolve or dissolve depending on the visitors’ proximity to the artwork.

Chris Pelletiere grew up in the Windsor Terrace neighborhood of Brooklyn and is best known as a painter, illustrator and cartoonist. His work can be found in many public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art; The Metropolitan Museum; The Brooklyn Museum of Art; The New York Public Library, and the New York Transit Museum, to name a few.

The exhibition, Paper Passages: Collages by Chris Pelletiere, on view at the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn Heights from May 8, 2007 through September 3, 2007, has been supported, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and the New York City Department of cultural Affairs.