After decades in obscurity, Henry Orlik emerges as one of America's most compelling chroniclers of urban life. The paintings, executed between 1980 and 1985, capture something essential about the American city—not just its physical reality, but its psychological landscape, the dreams and anxieties that pulse beneath the surface of metropolitan experience.
Orlik developed what he called "excitations"—a layered painting technique that builds tension through gestural intervention. The results are canvases that seem to vibrate with energy, where familiar city scenes become charged with unexpected meaning. A street corner transforms into a stage for unconscious desire; a skyscraper becomes a monument to collective memory. These are not simply paintings of cities, but excavations of what cities do to us, and what we project onto them.
This body of work represents a crucial missing chapter in the story of American Surrealism. While European Surrealists explored the unconscious through dreams and automatic drawing, Orlik found his inspiration in the American street. His paintings function like archaeological digs, revealing layers of cultural meaning embedded in everyday urban encounters. The familiar becomes strange, the mundane becomes mythic.
The timing of this exhibition adds particular resonance to Orlik's vision. We are witnessing an extraordinary renaissance of interest in Surrealism, sparked by the centenary of André Breton's founding manifesto in 1924. Major institutions worldwide have responded with landmark exhibitions: the Centre Pompidou's ‘Imagine! 100 Years of International Surrealism’ and Tate's comprehensive ‘Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds’. The art market has followed suit, with René Magritte's L'Empire des Lumières achieving $121.2 million at Christie's and Leonora Carrington's Les Distractions de Dagobert setting a record of $28.5 million at Sotheby's.
This surge of attention reflects the continuing relevance of Surrealism to our contemporary moment. In an age of urban displacement, digital alienation, and shifting national identities, Orlik's paintings speak directly to our current condition. His return to New York—the very city that serves as both his subject and inspiration—creates a robust dialogue between past and present, between the America he painted and the America of today.
Orlik's achievement extends beyond technical innovation. His canvases make visible the invisible forces that shape urban experience: the interplay of power and desire, the tension between individual identity and collective mythology, the way cities both shelter and alienate us. These works demand recognition not as historical curiosities, but as essential documents of the American experience—a nation still coming to terms with its own reflection.
This exhibition presents the most comprehensive examination of Orlik's practice to date, positioning his work within the broader narrative of American modernism while asserting his unique voice as an interpreter of metropolitan life. These visionary New York paintings capture the soul of the city through a master's eyes, offering a rare opportunity to encounter an artist whose time has finally come.
- Grant Ford
Henry OrlikFIGHTING SKYSCRAPERS, NEW YORK, 1980-1984
