Isabelle Garbani

Isabelle Garbani stands on the same spot of the subway platform every evening, next to the second trash can, waiting for the train. She wants to be lined up exactly with the exit stairs when the train eventually pulls into her stop. Garbani watches the express trains go by through the gap in the two rusted pillars. She is hot and exhausted. Garbani goes home and puts on paper what is was like to stand on that spot at that moment in June of 2006 in Brooklyn, New York.
24 Hours in the Subway was born that day. Each hour of the day has a drawing and a mood. It is a time line framed by birth and death, traveling through childhood, adolescence, maturity, decline. It is a series describing the possibilities of life in an American city in the 21st century. It is a series about potentials, mixxed opportunities, fear, accidents, attemts at goodness, symmetry, purity, hope, despair. It is a series about us, for us.

Garbani is a sculptor who received an MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2004. She has exhibited her work throughout the New York metropolitan area and the Northeast. Among her exhibitions are the Public Art project "Big Apple Fest" for the city of New York in 2004, Payne Gallery at Moravian College in 2006, Figureworks Gallery in Brooklyn in 2007, and her solo show at Earlville Opera House 2007-8. Garbani has collaborated with choreographer Adrienne Fadjo on her dance project "the Muse," lifecasting on stage. She has also curated exhibitions, including the New York Academy of Art Alumni Association Holiday Exhibit in New York City in 2007.