This is the first exhibition exploring Alfonso Ossorio's transformation of The Creeks, his East Hampton estate on Georgica Pond which was once declared "the Eighth Wonder of the Horticultural World" by the American Conifer Society.

The Creeks: Before, During and After features thirty-four watercolors created by Alfonso Ossorio in 1932 through 1934 as well as three hundred 4" x 6" color photographs taken by Ossorio as he walked through The Creeks in 1990, the last year of his life. The uncanny similarity between Ossorio’s watercolors, created between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, and his landscape masterwork, The Creeks, created between 1970 and 1990, is remarkable; The watercolors prophesized the fantastic landscape he created several decades later.

The watercolors are fanciful works on paper overflowing with flora of various shapes and colors, pods, streams, paths, birds, butterflies and towers. In the watercolors, we see the influence of early modernism on a very young, impressionable and forward thinking artist. Morris Hirshfield’s phantasmagorical scenes, Georgia O’Keeffe’s symbolic landscapes, Charles Burchfield’s visions of nature and Paul Klee’s whimsical forms are evident in Ossorio's assimilation of styles and mannerisms of progressive art.