Thomas Erben is very pleased to present a show of Paintings, Photographs, Audiovisual Drawings and a Participatory Object, featuring the following artists and works:

Andrej Monastyrskij together with Ilya Kabakov and Eric Bulatov constitute Collective Actions, the performative group of Russian Conceptualism based in Moscow since the early ’70s. On view will be Canon, a re-editioned participatory object, which is stylistically reminiscent of Constructivism (the destroyed original was created in 1975). The viewer is invited to peek through a protruding tube and activate an electric bell evoking an atmosphere of menace and suspicion. Works by Monastyrskij were recently included in Global Conceptualism, Queens Museum; Out of Actions organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Collective Actions, Exit Art, NY.

Dona Nelson will display two large canvases, part of her Arrangement series from 1992. Their opulent, varied textures are built with folded muslin, strips of canvas and thickly applied or poured paint. Her hybrid work is particularly interesting in the current discussion of contemporary painting, balancing ideas of object-hood, concept, craft, historical awareness and direct expression. The gallery will show a new body of work mid-fall coinciding with a major survey exhibition of her work at the Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greenboro, NC, August 20 – October 22.

An audio-visual installation by Vargas-Suarez Universal will include works on paper, executed in blue ball-point pen, installed amongst room filling wall drawings. The artist recorded the sound of pen marking the surface of the paper, and digitally manipulated it creating an ambient-style electronic composition which will play during the exhibition. Bean bags will facilitate a relaxed experience. His work recently drew attention in a group show at Arena@Feed, Brooklyn, and will be included in S-Files, The Selected Files, El Museo del Barrio, NY, as well as the London Biennale 2000.

Tom Wood‘s Looking for Love, a series of photographs taken between 1981 and ’86 at the Chelsea Beach Club, New Brighton, England, will inaugurate our 2000/1 season. A progenitor of the New Wave of British Photography, Wood’s work has become highly visible within the past two years through book publications, numerous reviews (Frieze, Flash Art, Leica, Camera Austria, British Journal of Photography…) and exhibitions (Galerie du Jour, Paris; Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne, Germany; Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, UK…).

The visual intelligence of Wood’s observing and densely conceived photography situates his work close to his German contemporaries Gursky, Struth and Ruff. Their strategy of distance is countered however by the interest in the human subjects he photographs in his immediate environment, and by an affluence of pictorial/formal elements. In New York, his work was shown in 1996 at The International Center of Photography and is included in the collection of MoMA. On view will be selected images from the People series.