FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Barbara Sandler               MY FUNNY VALENTINE

February 9 – March 11, 2006

PAVEL ZOUBOK GALLERY invites you to an exhibition of new paintings on paper by BARBARA SANDLER. Please join us at the opening reception on Thursday, February 9, 2006 from 6-8pm or during the run of the exhibition, which continues through March 11. The gallery is located at: 533 West 23rd Street (between 10th & 11th Avenues) Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10am-6pm

“Behold the Way our fine-feathered friend. His virtue doth parade. Thou knowest not, my dim-witted friend, the picture thou hast made. Thy vacant brow and thy tousled hair, conceal thy good intent. Thou noble, upright, truthful, sincere, and slightly dopey gent – you’re… My Funny Valentine, sweet comic valentine, you make me smile with my heart. Your looks are laughable, unphotographable, yet you’re my favorite work of art. Is your figure less than Greek? Is your mouth a little weak? When you open it to speak, are you smart? But don’t change a hair for me, not if you care for me. Stay little Valentine, stay! Each day is Valentine’s Day”.

Lorenz Hart

BARBARA SANDLER paints seductively disturbing images of male figures that engage a multi-layered discourse on the nature of identity. Her new oil on paper paintings draw their inspiration from a variety of sources, including fragments from old comic books, vintage photographs of handsome young athletes and the romantic music of the 1940s. Her work combines the fragmented imagery of collage with the visceral pleasure of painting to produce enigmatic figures whose dramatically altered visages are at once grotesque and curiously elegant. Critic Dominique Nahas has written:

“These heroically dissected and x-rayed images of the male figure are stand-ins for elusiveness itself, the elusiveness of character. Its principal aspect is an implacable restlessness, as the artist’s consistent treatment of surface and structure becomes content. Inscribed with precision, Sandler’s illusionism tropes on the very code of papier collé itself, inducing, if not mirroring, an almost visceral disquiet in the viewer.”    

Barbara Sandler’s new work continues a thirty-year investigation into the expressive power of figuration and portraiture, one that began in the mid-1970s with large-scale portrait heads of Native Americans, similarly based on found photographs. Since then, her work has continued to explore themes of portraiture and confrontation, figuration and abstraction, montage and painting. My Funny Valentine is the artist’s second solo exhibition at Pavel Zoubok Gallery.

For additional information and images please contact Julie Brunner Cross at

(212) 675 7490 or julie@pavelzoubok.com