Thomas Erben is very pleased to present works by Jenny Scobel covering the years from 1995 through present. On display will be various exquisitely rendered portraits of women executed by the artist in graphite on prepared wooden panels.

Scobel works in series using the same face, sometimes of known personalities ranging from Virginia Wolf to Michelle Pfeiffer, or, as in “Jello River”, of anonymous women such as an institutionalized juvenile delinquent. She lifts these faces from print media or found photographs and chooses them for their resonance. The images are then spliced onto various iconic torsos, such as the checkered summer dress of Jackeline Onassis, or the suit jacket of Katherine Hepburn, and combined with hands of sometimes older women. Perfectly morphed, the detailed execution by the artist’s hand adds an unsettling, probing psychology.

The almost always frontal, centrally placed, outwardly piercing half length figures are combined to effects of additional estrangement with backgrounds culled from 1930s and ‘40s cartoons or of hallucinatory floral patterns.

Selections from the artist’s collection of animated shorts from the 1930s, such as Fleischer’s “Betty Boop” or Iwerk’s “Mickey Mouse” will accompany the exhibition.

Jenny Scobel’s work shares the manipulated glamour of Inez van Lamsweerde, the pop iconography of Keith Edmier, and the disaffected stare of Vanessa Beecroft’s women.

Over the past years, her drawings have been exhibited at numerous venues such as Art Resources, Anna Kustera Gallery, Thread Waxing Space, Drawing Center, The Clocktower, all New York; GAle GAtes et al., Brooklyn; Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, and Asher/Faure and Track 16, Los Angeles.