Avant Gallery presents IN PIECES exhibition featuring Nathan Sawaya and Dean West

On Friday night, New York-based contemporary artist and celebrated sculptor Nathan Sawaya debuted a brand new collection of artwork entitled IN PIECES, a multimedia collaboration with award-winning Australian photographer Dean West. The invite-only VIP opening reception, presented by Avant Gallery was hosted by The New York Observer and GalleristNY, and the evening’s sponsors included Haute Living Magazine, Alacrán Tequila and Forever Young Wine.

IN PIECES features a series of large-scale tableau compositions based on ideas about nature, culture, society and more specifically, identity. West and Sawaya collaborated on every element of these pieces of artwork. The duo traveled to various locales in California, Toronto, New York, Utah and Nevada to photograph the scenes for these stories. Sawaya built the featured sculptures piece by piece, trying to capture the illusion that the LEGO sculptures are native to the setting.

IN PIECES will run through March 17 (10 a.m. to 6 p.m.) at the Openhouse Gallery (201 Mulberry Street) in SoHo. The exhibition will be open daily to the public and there is no admission. For more information on IN PIECES please log onto: www.InPiecesCollection.com.