Thomas Erben is very pleased to announce the first show in his new public space at 476 Broome Street.

On exhibit will be paintings on paper by LUKE GRAY, sculptures installed with photographs by SARAH ROSSITER, and a relief by SENGA NENGUDI.

Although disparate in age, ethnic background, sexual orientation, and art practices, the three artists share an interest in formal qualities as a vehicle of content, thus creating multiple possibilities of reading rather than focused didactic “points”.

As a function of a rather inward mode of experience, their artistic output materializes subjective investigations. Subjectivism here is understood not as narcissistic indulgence, but as a means of access to inner realms and dimensions. A materialistically-oriented perception of the world is shifted to one of inner impulses as points of reference and as generators of phenomenological appearances.

In LUKE GRAY‘s paintings we are presented with a synthetic space where the brushstroke is the building block of potentially unlimited configurations that shift cinematically in an exaggerated spectrum of color and light. On an inner level, these paintings convey ecstatic worlds of multiple, latent realities, similar to dream states, from which physical experience emerges.

SARAH ROSSITER‘s sculptures, juxtaposed with staged self-portraits or appropriated family pictures, investigate the conditions of their own genesis.

In SENGA NENGUDI‘s work, each constituent element of a performance-sculpture, installation, or work on paper, is at the same time a signifier, reciprocally expanding and multiplying its potential readings.

Thomas Erben has worked privately in New York City since 1989, specializing in contemporary American art with a focus on the European art market. His interest in works of the African American avant-garde led to the first show “Lorraine O’Grady: Photo Images 1980-81,” on view in his apartment in 1993 (see Anastasia Aukeman’s review in Art in America, July 1994).