Artist Statement: My concept is to incorporate imagery that depicts and celebrates diversity, through wildlife and flora representing countries in the American continent - in the spirit NYC Urban Landscape throughout NYC history. The idea is to include animals representative of as many countries as possible. In the final depiction the piano will look as one semi-abstract expressionistic rain forest.
Franck de las Mercedes lives and works in New York City. He was born in Masaya, Nicaragua and moved to New York at the age of twelve. His body of work includes painting, collage, and drawing in which he combines abstract figuration, journal entry, and hieroglyphic-like text in energetic abstractions bursting with color. In Franck's paintings, childhood memories in war-torn Nicaragua and his upbringing as an immigrant in the US are extracted and combined with fragments of current events and family dynamics in life and books. Exploring the contrast between memory and present-day cultural context, Franck creates scenes on canvas of an emotionally-charged urban landscape. In 2006, de las Mercedes achieved international acclaim with his conceptual art project "The Priority Boxes," a public project conceived as a way to promote peace through participatory free art. Recent exhibitions include, The 5th Bronx Latin American Art Biennial, Queens Museum and The Joan Mitchel Foundation.
