{"id":559797,"date":"2026-05-01T02:03:25","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T02:03:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/559797\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T02:03:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T02:03:25","slug":"devlin-claros-dreamlike-portrait-of-queens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/559797\/","title":{"rendered":"Devlin Claro\u2019s Dreamlike Portrait of Queens"},"content":{"rendered":"

Set in the \u201cmiddle world\u201d of Queens, Devlin Claro\u2019s new exhibition, Crushing, is an inspired portrait of the borough as a microcosm for the rest of AmericaApril 30, 2026<\/p>\n

In a new exhibition at Donald Ryan Gallery in New York, photographer Devlin Claro shares his latest body of work, Crushing, a series of carefully staged photos that depict his version of America, shot in the city and its surrounding outer boroughs \u2013 in parking lots, on street corners, surrounded by municipal buildings and civic bridges.<\/p>\n

For the photographer, a fourth-generation New Yorker who was born and raised in Queens, the borough is a microcosm for the rest of the country as it evolves continually. His images, some of which were recently featured in a major survey exhibition at MoMA PS1, subtly register the city\u2019s tensions: economic boom and instability, surveillance following 9\/11 and life on the internet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Claro describes Queens as \u201cthe middle world\u201d, neither peripheral nor central, familiar yet indeterminate. \u201cStatistically, Queens is one of the most ethnically diverse boroughs in the whole world. Everyone is on top of each other and so by nature it\u2019s like America at its best,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve never really been anywhere else, not for any real length of time, so this is my America. It\u2019s a stage for the rest of America.\u201d<\/p>\n

The exhibition\u2019s title is multifaceted. \u201cIt\u2019s about being crushed, crushing it, crushing on someone. Crushing is a very physical sensation, at times an overwhelm.\u201d Claro\u2019s photos, developed out of his home darkroom in Flushing, tell fictionalised stories, prompted by scenes from works of art and photography and authorless images he\u2019s seen on Tumblr, personalised to represent pockets of his world. \u201cI like to think of it as sampling, the way one might when making music,\u201d he says, before showing me a photo of a young girl filming in a park with a camcorder, a framing sampled from Paul Gauguin\u2019s 1888 painting Vision After the Sermon: \u201cI started photography much like her, out with a camera at 12 years old.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"DevlinYouTube’s Baby (2026)Photography by Devlin Claro. Courtesy of the artist and Donald Ryan Gallery<\/p>\n

\u201cI love Tumblr,\u201d says Claro, who was born in 1995. \u201cI grew up on it. It\u2019s at once this very valuable visual resource and at the same time, this evil thing that shows you an abundance of imagery with no reference, no author, and no context. But for better or worse, being a teenager at that time, my sensibility has been shaped by it.\u201d In many ways, this informed the series, inspiring him to sample from, personalise and restage other pre-existing images. \u201cMaking sense of the abundance of imagery by making it relative to my world.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Claro\u2019s outer borough New York is neither utopian or dystopian. It\u2019s not romanticised and it\u2019s not documentarian. In many ways it\u2019s not even America. \u201cEven if there\u2019s still conflict, poverty, racism, and ritual too, I can\u2019t claim to examine the rest of the country, because my America is a micro-pocket\u201d \u2013 of which there are many across America and the world \u2013 \u201ceach with its own set of particular and peculiar people, behaviours and phenomenons.\u201d Crushing becomes a study of this: an erratic amalgam symbolic of an erratic city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A defining feature in Claro\u2019s photos is a sense of ambiguity surrounding time. Fashion, props, accessories and architecture are indicative of a moment post-millenium, but when exactly is unclear. \u201cCrocs, Pokemon, a camcorder \u2013 it could be the early 2000s or it could be 2030,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"Devlin6.1 mb on diskPhotography by Devlin Claro. Courtesy of the artist and Donald Ryan Gallery<\/p>\n

One image sees two people in a parking lot outside a disused Toys R Us, a nod to Justine Kurland\u2019s 1998 photograph of the same name. \u201cThe spectre of logos and ugly graphic designs are very much a part of our natural American landscape,\u201d he says, making it a point to incorporate things others may consider gimmicky. \u201cWhere does good taste meet bad taste? Where can we abandon taste altogether?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another image depicts a ghost gun, a 3D printed single-fire weapon made using an untraceable file that can be downloaded from the dark web. \u201cThe file is like 6 megabytes. It\u2019s pretty menacing,\u201d says Claro. \u201cIt can fire one bullet at close range with enough force to kill somebody.\u201d He juxtaposes this with an image of a cowboy as a symbol of the \u201ccenturies-old American ideal\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI worked with Mark Fisher\u2019s ideas about the future being cancelled, and ghosts,\u201d says the photographer. \u201cMy generation has to contend with a lot, political urgencies, many of which are an accumulation of movements past, others destined to be co-opted and sold back to us \u2013 like the punk movement was.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"DevlinThe PlazaPhotography by Devlin Claro. Courtesy of the artist and Donald Ryan Gallery<\/p>\n

He also revisits the last century, featuring the orange hue of New York\u2019s post-war sodium vapour street lights, which are being replaced across the city by LED lights. \u201cSodium vapour street lights made the night lighting really warm, but LEDs are bright and white and supposedly they\u2019re better for driving. Really they\u2019re better for surveillance,\u201d he says. \u201cLEDs feel like a post-2000 thing.\u201d The result of using this lighting is contrast; a sort of modern-day black and white. \u201cWhen you have a deep orange in a photograph, any blue in the background will become intensified. Blue and orange are also the New York Knicks\u2019 colours.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica doesn\u2019t really have its own solid identity, and anyone who thinks it does is really misguided. In America\u2019s amorphism is hybridity, and New Yorkers are really used to that idea,\u201d he says. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t until I got older that I realised how strange this country is. On the one hand, I am exhausted with it and yet I also have hope for the potential there is for living well together. I want people to look at my photos and think about how strange and rich and bad and good America is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Devlin Claro: Crushing<\/a> is on show at Donald Ryan Gallery in New York until 13 June 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Set in the \u201cmiddle world\u201d of Queens, Devlin Claro\u2019s new exhibition, Crushing, is an inspired portrait of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-559797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}