The chairs. Oh, those chairs. One floats in the weeds of a local watering hole, bringing to mind the baby Moses adrift in the bulrushes; another stares out the window… Elsewhere, they form a straight line or huddle in a circle. But there’s more here than visual provocation. There’s history, too… Every one of them tells of a time, some fifty to sixty years in duration, when American Jews, largely from the East Coast, ventured to the Catskills, to its hundreds of bungalow colonies and equally large number of resorts, for fun and games, for a respite from the summer heat and the pressures of daily life. But that’s all gone now and what remains are Scheinfeld’s canny images, which bear witness to both change and stasis. Her artistry makes us see that the past doesn’t vanish so much as startle. Just when you think there’s nothing left from an earlier era, you happen upon something that stops you in your tracks, some quirky detail that puts you in mind, ruefully, perhaps, of the odd juxtaposition of human and natural history.”” — Jenna Weissman Joselit

 

“Gazing at the orphaned objects of Marisa Scheinfeld’s pellucid lens, it seems hard to believe that they were once the evidence of immigrant triumph. As Scheinfeld demonstrates in her evocative and haunting pictures, nature is green in tooth and claw. Vegetation has come to reclaim its turf. Weeds grow out of the cracks in empty swimming pools—surely the most poignant of all ruins. In one of Scheinfeld’s most memorable works, a row of bar stools awaits customers who will never return, at the edge of a counter long since removed by jobbers or vandals. The seats recall the foreground of an Edward Hopper painting enveloped in a clamorous silence… Let your fingers do the walking through this exhibit of ruins. You will not be the same person as the one who first opened this magical volume.” — Stefan Kanfer