STRETCH BEFORE YOU DIE is a limited 48hr engagement which runs from Wednesday October 22nd through Thursday, October 23rd. Viewing hours for this special 2 day engagement are 1-9pm, with special events occurring on both evenings from 6pm-9pm.

THE STOREFRONT PROJECT presents: "STRETCH BEFORE YOU DIE" - Collage by John Hagerty

STRETCH BEFORE YOU DIE launches on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2025 with a reception from 6-9pm at 618 East 9th Street in the East Village. In addition to over 40 new works, limited edition t-shirts & other curious items by the artist will be available for sale at the opening.

"Stretch Before You Die" is artist John Hagerty's 3rd show with NYC based gallery, THE STOREFRONT PROJECT. He initially collaborated with the gallery in 2016 for "Fugitive Material" and again in 2017 for "Rare Vacation" at Miami Art Week. Hagerty's works are often culled and collaged from vintage advertising, stock photography and ephemera — in particular the 1970s — re-contextualized as abstract, figurative and surreal cut-ups casting new, often sinister light on a bygone yet perennially seductive era.

Hagerty (b.1979, Scarsdale, NY) is a self-taught artist who works by day as an art director in the ad world. He studied business and sociology at Le Moyne College in Syracuse and obtained a Masters in Communication from Virginia Commonwealth University. After working on the business side of advertising, he went back to school and landed a job in the creative department, ascending the ranks to Associate Creative Director. During a brief stint as a sanitation worker in 1998, he stumbled upon a stash of vintage Playboy magazines, which he began collecting, categorizing and cutting up into the 32 collages showcased in FUGITIVE MATERIAL (2016).

For the last twenty years, John Hagerty has been collecting out-of-date magazines from the 1950s to the late 1970s. He loves printed media and finds something comforting in those faded pages. It started as a reference practice back in graduate school, just cutting and pasting for research. But over time, his books took on a life of their own, becoming a way to process feelings and ideas. That's how he ended up making the abstract collages he's known for now. He takes complete images, breaks them apart, and turns bits of them into larger compositions, finding order in chaos through rhythm, spacing, and repetition.

STRETCH BEFORE YOU DIE features work from the past decade. The collages start as a personal diary of sorts. While he's cutting out scraps (he calls it 'harvesting'), Hagerty keeps circling back to the same themes: drinking, escapism, freedom, childhood, masculinity. It's his way of working through feelings and memories. But what started as something completely personal has become something bigger. These aren't really his images. They're from a shared cultural memory we all have, full of ads and stories and ideas that shaped whole generations. When he puts these pieces back together in new ways, he's looking for what connects us.