Courtesy of Erik Foss. The artist with the show’s centerpiece, “Rapture.”

Erik Foss, co-owner of East Village fixtures Lit Lounge and the adjoining Fuse Gallery, is known to the downtown art world mainly as a curator with an eye for musicians and counterculture types: when The Local last encountered the lanky 38-year-old he was hosting a reception for rocker-turned-artist David Yow. On September 11, he’ll open his first solo show in New York City as an artist, at Mallick Williams & Co. in Chelsea. If the date seems like an odd one for what should be a celebratory occasion, it isn’t — the exhibition, “Avarice,” is a reflection on the events of a decade ago.

Mr. Foss was born in Elgin, Illinois, outside of Chicago; his father, a mechanical engineer, moved him to Phoenix, Arizona when he was 5. “I grew up in the desert, skateboarding and being a crazy kid – without much culture,” he said. In 1992, along with friends, he put on his first show (which included his own works) in a Phoenix warehouse. “For the lights, we borrowed Christmas decorations from front lawns,” said Mr. Foss. “The show was called ‘The Christmas Show’ but it had nothing to do with Christmas and there was LSD involved and it was a lot of fun.” In 1999, Mr. Foss again included his own work in the first show that he curated in New York City, at a downtown bar. Two years later, in the month before September 11, he co-founded Lit and Fuse Gallery – and eventually decided to stop showing his own works. “Avarice” will be his first solo exhibition aside from a few in Sweden and San Francisco.

The show’s centerpiece, “Rapture,” will be a 11-by-13-foot oil painting. (As an admirer of Renaissance painters, Mr. Foss said he preferred to work with oil paints on canvas and linen.) It will be accompanied by nine other large paintings depicting what are said to be abstractions of the Twin Towers; a separate room (shown below) will contain smaller acrylic drawings of about 20-by-30 inches. Yesterday, we spoke to the artist about the paintings and their impetus.

What was your experience of 9/11?

I was living in Chinatown and I was a bartender at Odessa, Bowery Ballroom, and Mercury Lounge. It was a beautiful September weekend and I think half the people I knew were upstate or away on vacation. On September 12, I started working at one of the bars and I worked 23 days straight because people couldn’t come back to the city or they couldn’t come back to work because they were so [messed] up. Others moved away. I served thousands of people in Lower Manhattan for a month straight and had to hear those stories. I had to serve a room full of firemen [at a benefit] – a room full of men torn to pieces. The heroes of New York City destroyed.

What prompted you to revisit this now?

I’ve had this plan for a year and a half. It’s such a crazy, terrible thing that happened – how can people not talk about it? It was like a massive war that happened in 10, 20, 30 minutes – however long it took for both of the towers to come down. A girlfriend at the time who I then married was a volunteer downtown – she’s just starting to show the signs of God knows what. She’s having a lot of problems with her lungs. There are so many people affected in so many ways.

Why the title “Avarice”?

With any act of war, there’s a massive amount of greed involved. There are a lot of people out there that are to be held responsible for this and I feel a part of their angles toward this situation happening had to do with the gaining of tangible things – oil, money, power, whatever. But I’m not pointing fingers. This show isn’t about laying blame – it’s more of a memorial. The title just felt right.

You originally planned to put this show on yourself. How did it end up in a proper gallery?

When I first started painting, I thought, no one’s ever going to let me do a solo show on 9/11, on the 10^th anniversary. It’s such an insane idea – it’s such a risk. The press will either love it and say, ‘You have such a huge heart and it’s amazing,’ or they’re going to go for the nuts and say, ‘How dare you? It’s such a sensitive subject.’ But I’ve never been afraid of anything, so I went for it. I told this gallery that was interested in my work and they loved it. I was working on the fourth painting when I talked to Alex Williams [of Mallick Williams & Co.] six or seven months ago.

Courtesy of Erik Foss

What’s the idea behind hanging the canvases upside-down while you painted?

When you’re painting upside-down, anything you paint on top will run down to the bottom, so that it looks like everything is slowly being raised up – kind of like how they’re building this new building where the towers were. I was raised Catholic, so the whole thing started reminding me of a resurrection – like everyone should be getting up and wiping the dust off and looking to the future.

Emotionally, has working on this been hurtful or helpful for you?

I can honestly tell you that I haven’t cried as much as I’ve cried in my entire life through this year of making this body of work. The building manager [of the gallery] walked in and within a minute, once he realized what was going on, opened his eyes and exploded into tears. And then I did. I think there’s going to be a lot of that because what happened is one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever lived through in my life. It’s always going to be unfair – it’s always going to be something that shouldn’t have happened.

“Avarice” is on view from Sept. 11 through Sept. 30 at Mallick Williams & Co., 150 Eleventh Avenue.