January 7 to February 20, 2025

Link to images from the exhibition
Review: The Stranger
Review: Seattle Times
Review: Seattle Weekly

For his first solo exhibition at Platform, Marc Dombrosky attempts to make sense of his new life in Las Vegas through the collection and rehabilitation of objects and memories found scattered in the desert:

"Michael Jackson died on the day that I both started and lost my job in Las Vegas. My fellow workers and I drove around that afternoon picking up boxes to move everything out of the closing showroom, crying. Crying because of the death, our own fears, our losses, and crying because, at that moment, we were totally screwed in middle of the desert. "Neverland"—as a fictional world, an isolated California compound—has always been about our hopes and failures but as is typical in Las Vegas today, usually not in that order. My exhibition, also titled "Neverland," unites some of the objects that have mystified, disappointed, thrilled, saddened, and possessed me over the last several months in our new home. These include an embroidered cardboard sign that reads “FOR SALE”, with thread covering scrawled, faded black marker written onto an open, torn-apart box of medical supplies; a black t-shirt depicting Michael Jackson, with the King of Pop now also hand-embroidered over in thick black thread, simultaneously erasing and fixing his image; a shipping blanket patched together and repaired with repurposed pillowcases, tablecloths, and fabric scraps; and a series of found drawings and writings where every handmade mark has been meticulously re-written in matching thread. 

"The blanket was given to me a few days after we moved to Las Vegas. It was the beginning of the summer and the blanket was wrapped around pieces of a bed frame. When we took the unit out of storage and assembled it, we started using the blanket to protect our bikes from the relentless Vegas sun. Placed over the bikes, on our patio, the blanket—over the course of only two months—decayed visibly. The blue surface turned to blue dust and with the slightest touch, drifted away. I tried to take a sample to match the color and it turned to powder in my hand, in my pocket. This is what Vegas often feels like now for us; slowly destructive, invisibly weakening, turning to dust in front of our eyes. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

"With my embroidery-on-paper pieces, I’m always trying to use sewing as a way to recover, to sustain, however briefly, the passing notions, drawings, thoughts, and words that are captured on the sheets. With the blanket (and t-shirt, and cardboard box), I want to do this same thing, explore this same process. I want to preserve this object that protected my bike. I bought fabric that seemed to be (in my memory) the same color of the blanket with the intention of covering, renewing, preserving the surface. As I was sewing it on, sometimes by hand, sometimes by machine, the blanket would frequently give way, disintegrating, evaporating, dissolving; leaving. The very process of trying to restore this object, this artifact, seems rooted in failure. It’s going to leave this world. But I’m going to try and keep it here, salvage what I can, darning and grafting from recycled tablecloths, pillowcases, and other blankets. This blanket will be a cyborg; bionically superior to the original, reinforced, but also somewhat weaker, more fragile. Like the hero of Haarlem plugging the dyke to save his town, I like to think I’m helping too, a little."

Link to artist's main page