Before, when I dressed from the waist down, I spent each morning rushing to the train. With cat-like agility, I descended 3,000 perilous steps from street level to the subway platform. There, I was rewarded with the scent of urine and dog-sized rats tossing aside poison traps to fight over knives, skittles and cigarette butts. After the winner was announced, I gazed at the flashing lies on the digital arrival-time screens, the wait time increasing with each passing second. About 70 hours later, the shattering screech of rusty wheels on even rustier tracks signaled me to the oncoming deathtrap that was my ride home. As the ribbed metal can, held together by electrical tape and bits of gum, slowly shuttered to a stop, I desperately jockeyed for a good position, elbowing children and the elderly aside. There I waited for the gates of heaven to open. And when they did, I was ready. I made a dash, clambering over and under my fellow passengers, spilling drinks and knocking out teeth all for that one glimmering fiberglass seat. I had won. I could sit, unnoticed, avoiding eye contact with the pregnant, wedged between butts and backpacks and wholly content. Then and for eternity, I would nestle into my luxurious window seat, stare intently at my phone and sway in unison with my comrades as we creaked and zig-zagged below our honorary city.

-Anonymous Rider

In his Subway Series, Andrew Zimbelman investigates our collective detachment in what was once the pinnacle of extreme coexistence. Through his sketches, the artist creates a social documentation of public space and explores the reaches of our averted gaze. A smartphone drinks its owner’s face. The act of thumbing a screen becomes a portal of teleportation. In Zimbelman’s series, these poses play out on repeat, heads bowed down in a droning loop of erasure. His subjects live alone, adorned with the glow of Candy Crush, absorbed in the solace of some found world. He captures us detached and unassuming, bestowing us with the negative space of our own making. The Subway Series maps our shared disengagement, revealing a gaze that lacks a place to land.

– Mark Reigelman II