Thomas Erben
reception 09/09 Thur. 6-9pm  09/09 - 10/23	SETH EDENBAUM 14 Portraits of an actor and other recent works
Thomas Erben is very pleased to announce SETH EDENBAUM's third solo exhibition at the gallery, inaugurating our fourth season. Over the past ten years the artist has made figurative and abstract paintings, sculptures, photographs, stage sets and videos, alone and in collaboration with others. All of his works exhibit a playful formal rigor, and many hint at a narrative that is often, but not always, darkly funny. This show will include a new edition of small b/w photographs, "14 Portraits of an Actor," recording an actor performing an assigned set of gestures and emotions: happiness, fear, sadness, etc. The photographs focus on a conflict between staged feeling and portraiture, hence the title, so that while they are stylized and 'fake,' they also act as intimate images of a human being. Also in the show will be a small and eccentric sculpture study in wire and string, 'The Raft'; 'My Waterloo,' a large collage of found photographs and iridescent cellophane; and an even larger painting, a diptych with a flat image of a running horse that manages to bridge the gap between a gracefully mannered abstraction and a not entirely ironic figuration. The work is full of references without being swallowed by them. Whether commenting on American abstraction, pop art, theater and photography, or the abstract academic styles of Chinese landscape painting, it maintains it's independence. Free of dogma and consistent despite appearances; intellectual, witty and sensuous, Seth Edenbaum's work is some of the most inventive and complex now on view in New York.