Miro Sinovcic - “Good Night City” (2017), oil on canvas, 36” × 36“.
(HACKENSACK, NJ) -- Riverside Gallery presents a group exhibition, The City and Her Subconscious, from July 10 to August 5, 2026. The exhibition features the works of Miro Sinovcic, Minseok Kang, and Adem Gjonbalaj. In addition, the gallery showcases a summer collection of multiple artists within the gallery's roster.
The group exhibition reflects on the desire machinery and the subconscious collective dream of the city, who glitters as if she were wearing a glamorous dress with lights within the darkness of the night. The modern city is a symptom and a byproduct of capitalism, whose decline in the 1970s with the white flight to the suburbs was manufactured by the CIA (as a response to the danger of nuclear weapons during the Cold War) and whose regrowth is enabled by the present sociopolitical circumstances and the market forces, with the end of the Cold War in the 1990s.
The city is positioned centrally in the network of infrastructure, logistical systems, the flow of people, ideas, and money, and cultural productions. All of these aspects of the modern city equate to the accumulation of access (to people, goods, and ideas), which translates to an accumulation of power and the spectacle of beauty, which in turn leads to the accumulation of desire, in which the city becomes the subject of human desire. The accumulation of desire then draws more people, goods, and ideas towards the city in a neverending cycle of desire machinery and cultural production.
Minseok Kang – “Goku,” 36”x48”, mixed media on canvas
Miro Sinovcic makes semi-impressionist, pointillist paintings that depict the city with elegantly grouped and degrouped strokes or points of color. Using this pointillist language, Sinovcic represents the lights and reflections of the city on both material and conceptual terms, in which the lights suggest the vibrant energy and the idealistic possibilities of the city and her inhabitants.
Minseok Kang makes paintings that reflect on the pop culture and iconic pop imagery that seep through the cultural discourse and human imagination. Characters and powerful beings such as Pokemon trainers and Sun Wukong from the Chinese tale, “Journey to the West,” appear in Kang’s paintings with majestic colors and inviting personalities. Kang’s works represent the subject matter of the capitalist desire machinery - the iconic characters and individuals representing special powers or lived narratives as the key players in the social environment or the sites of cultural production, including games, animations, and novels. These icons and symbols occupy the capital parts of the body (or the head) that move the rest of the system into action, to fit in as a cog in the larger machinery of cultural and material production.
Adem Gjonbalaj also references desire and symbolism in his oil paintings. Gojanbalaj is lyrical and abstracted in style, with his symbolism and abstraction dealing with the realm of flesh and subconscious desire, as well as mortality and the beauty of the (human) body and culture. Gjonbalaj’s work operates within a humanist framework of western painters who celebrate the triumphs and the struggles of humanity, in which the long arc of humanity’s trajectory is one of progress marked by idealism.
Adem Gjonbalaj. 26” x 37“, mixed media on canvas.
Croatian born artist and architect Miro Sinovcic graduated from Zagreb Art Academy. As an artist, art director and architect he received numerous international awards, including “The Best of Show” from the Rizzoli in Milan, Italy. He is also a two time recipient of the highest Croatian art award and the Bronze Medal winner at the world’s biggest book fair in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1985, Sinovcic immigrated to the United States where he became one of the most sought after artists in publishing, advertising and in motion pictures. His art has appeared on more than a thousand book covers and his innovative techniques greatly influenced the traditional look of book illustrations toward more modern treatments of color and atmosphere. As a fine artist, Sinovcic’s success came overnight. The response of corporate and individual clients has been so enthusiastic that galleries have waiting lists for his art. Sinovcic sees and paints New York City like nobody before him. His paintings are bursting with life, energy, colors and a constant sense of movement. He says of his work, “my paintings are what New York City is: a wonderful mess and a beautiful noise”.
Minseok Kang is a painter who is currently finishing his BFA at the School of Visual Arts (2023). He deals with the hybrid fusion of the pop culture images from Japanese anime and video games, and the historical/traditional iconography of his Korean/Northeast Asian heritage. Kang utiilizes sprays, digital prints, and heavy impasto to create brilliant and dazzling combination of colors that boldly pronounce and illuminate the subject matter. Most of Kang’s paintings depict a figure or a flower in a portraiture-like centered composition, providing the subject with room and composure. The experimental nature of Kang’s approach to painting promises the continued relevance of figurative painting in the 21st century.
Adem Gjonbalaj (BFA, The Cooper Union) is a Brooklyn-based artist exploring the intersection of media culture and bodily experience. His work is characterized by a hybrid process, utilizing digital design to compose surreal environments that are then meticulously translated into paint. Influenced by the “choreography” of pop culture and a lifelong sketchbook practice, Gjonbalaj’s paintings serve as an emotional history—transforming the noise of a media-saturated world into a singular, felt presence.
Riverside Gallery is a 21st century pioneer in exhibiting international and regional artists, showcasing a diverse range of works from abstraction to representation on the topics and the questions that define our time. The Gallery is dedicated to providing opportunities for both established and newer artists, as well as meeting the requirements of high-end collectors and clientele. The gallery is located at the Riverside Mall in Hackensack, NJ, within a close proximity to New York City, playing an important part in the discourse surrounding contemporary art and issues.
