ROODGALLERY is pleased to present Lux Figura, the first exhibition of paintings by leading architect and urban designer, Alexandros Washburn.

Perhaps best known as the Chief Urban Designer of New York City during the Bloomberg era, Alexandros Washburn has been steadily painting throughout his career as an architect, a community leader, and a writer . His paintings have an informality that are characteristic of a singular vision. Ranging from the classical nude to the ragged and abstract, Lux Figura features work made over the last 20 years. With frayed edges, unworked gesso, layered lines of charcoal and gold leaf, they resemble drawings on a sketchbook page. Large in scale combining broad brush strokes with startling color, Washburn’s work abandons perspective, emphasizing surface texture to capture the quiet isolation of the world around him.

Alexandros Washburn is the former Chief Urban Designer of the New York Department of City Planning, where he helped shape the High Line, Hudson Yards and iconic buildings and public spaces throughout the city. An architect who has worked both in the private and public sector, he was US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's staff architect, founded the Pennsylvania Station Redevelopment Corporation, wrote the landmark book, The Nature of Urban Design with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, and now leads the global design practice DRAW Brooklyn.

Peter Opheim is a Brooklyn-based artist, known for his large-scale oil paintings of fantastical creatures. Opheim received his B.A. from St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota. Opheim has exhibited his work in galleries across the US, Canada and Asia and was awarded the Pollock/Krasner Foundation Grant. His work has been included in corporate collections such as Hallmark, Northwest Airlines, and the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, and is in the permanent collection of several museums in the United States and South Korea.