FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Summer Group Exhibition

MINDSCAPE June 24 – August 13, 2004

PAVEL ZOUBOK GALLERY is pleased to announce MINDSCAPE, the first group exhibition in our new street-level space in Chelsea. Please join us for the opening reception on Thursday, June 24 from 6-8pm, or during the run of the exhibition, which continues through August 13. The gallery is located at: 533 West 23rd Street (between 10th & 11th Avenues)

Summer hours: Monday – Friday, 11am-6pm

MINDSCAPE features the work of twenty-two artists who, employing a variety of styles and media, create cerebral landscapes that challenge our perceptions about space and time. Floating worlds realized through the dense accumulation of forms both found and invented, enigmatic voids populated by fantastical objects and/or beings – What unites the artists in MINDSCAPE is a willingness to go beyond the conventions of geography or representation, creating visual and mental maps of the subconscious, distinctly surreal yet somehow familiar.

NORIKO AMBE's dense accumulations of hand-cut paper are transformed into austere and contemplative topographical landscapes. NORA ASLAN creates intricately patterned collages on canvas that combine decorative structures with photographic images that explore the dark side of human experience. In his Riding the Ox series of inlaid black and white collages, JOHN DIGBY invites the viewer into a highly pixilated world in which the historical past collides with the expressive language of geometric abstraction. MARGARET EVANGELINE's violently ruptured planes of highly polished aluminum (rendered with actual firearms) are transformed into mysterious landscapes punctuated by material references to domesticity. KATHLEEN KUCKA's richly layered abstract paintings open out to floating worlds of distorted cell-like structures. DAVID MANN creates luminous abstractions that suggest primordial phenomena and moments of organic transformation, with cellular forms percolating through, and exploding from, mysterious plasmatic surroundings. RUTH MARTEN's highly detailed and intimately-scaled paintings of hair recapitulate classic representation while wholly changing the context. In STEPHEN ROBESON MILLER's pen and ink drawings, biomorphic structures twist in and around each other to form markedly surreal organic landscapes. In the recesses of JERRY MISCHAK's duct-taped panels, fragmented photographs of actual spaces are unexpectedly transformed into shattered landscapes. JOHAN NOBELL's paintings depict surreal, apocalyptic scenes with wry and witty imagery. Using vivid colors and a hyper-real, cartoon-like style, he pulls the viewer into seemingly definable narratives that prove ultimately elusive. SANDRA PAYNE juxtaposes sculptural forms from nature with fabricated embellishments to transport the viewer into a strange new world of rhythmic cool and material opulence. BARBARA TAKENAGA creates densely populated compositions that combine aspects of psychedelic art with both Eastern and European decorative forms. Their overall effect is one of intense contemplation aimed at the resolution of conflicted states of being. CHRISTOPHER TANNER's glittering mixed-media paintings are replete with floating serpentine “drawing lines” that flow

freely from one plane to another in a distinctly surreal vision of reflection and refraction. In MARITTA TAPANAINEN's intricate collages, vestiges of delicate contours trace lifelines with organic origins – accumulated fragments of pods, cells, tendrils and anatomical details coalesce to form an intricately woven otherworldliness. Artist duo VENSKE & SPÄNLE's white marble Smurfs transform the gallery space into a three-dimensional biomorphic landscape, blurring the lines between hard and soft, sculpture and installation. Intent on creating a fictive space while maintaining an essentially abstract composition, DARREN WATERSTON invites the viewer to "wander" through the environments he creates which range from viscous liquid to airy fog. Lush and meticulously rendered floral images, rich in color and texture, flourish in the work of LAURA SHARP WILSON. Informed by nature but drawn from the imagination, her densely patterned works investigate the human condition in relation to the natural environment. AMY YOES takes the decorative detail -- the adorning accent, the tiniest trimming -- and incorporates it into highly ornate and vibrantly colored constellations that seem to float in space. DANIEL ZELLER creates painstakingly intricate biomorphic drawings that reference sources as disparate as maps, satellite images, anatomical diagrams and electron micrographs, bringing the viewer closer to the experience of drawing as a kind of visual and mental journey. To be sure, the contemporary preoccupation with imagery of the subconscious, automatism and biomorphism has its roots in Surrealism. With this in mind, the exhibition also includes historical Surrealist works by KAY SAGE (1898-1963), STELLA SNEAD (still working at age 94) and YVES TANGUY (1900-1955).