FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

JONATHAN SANTLOFER                     October 13 – November 12, 2005

paintings drawings stories

PAVEL ZOUBOK GALLERY is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new works by New York artist JONATHAN SANTLOFER. Please join us for the opening reception on Friday, October 14, from 6-8pm, or during the run of the exhibition, which continues through November 12.

The gallery is located at: 533 West 23rd Street (between 10th & 11th Avenues)

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10am-6pm

In JONATHAN SANTLOFER’s new paintings and works on paper, the artist continues his exploration into the icons of our visual culture, creating seamless montages that combine knowing reference and sharp wit. As the author of the acclaimed suspense novels The Death Artist, Color Blind and now The Killing Art (to be released in October by Harper Collins), language has always played an important role in Santlofer’s creative process. The works in the current exhibition are replete with visual and verbal allusions. At times they become literal “talking heads” – the Mona Lisa discussing her history as an icon of beauty and artistic greatness, or Janet Leigh's screaming mouth spewing out the story of Psycho’s iconic shower scene. Other works, such as Man Ray, Marcel and Marilyn contain sentence fragments, both readable and obscured, as part of a larger, implied narrative.

Santlofer’s recent work reflects a continued interest in the relationship between “realism” and illusion, history and popular culture. His art historical montages are fictions of what might have been -- Man Ray photographing Marilyn Monroe, or Mondrian arranging his own works “salon style”. Several of the artist’s new paintings, such as Mondrian and Revolution, make specific reference to nineteenth-century trompe l'oeil with their disparate elements “tacked” or “taped” to the picture surface. Each echoes something about its subject, transforming a work about Mondrian into a quasi-Mondrian itself, and a collection of Russian Constructivist images into a large modernist construction. Santlofer’s drawings are equally rich in detail, like found fragments of memorabilia – a sheet from Marilyn's scrapbook, a Hitchcock story board, or a Mapplethorpe bouquet of flower photos taped together as a birthday card.

In his erotically charged Picasso series, Santlofer places the Catalan master inside of his own illusion, echoing Picasso’s signature styles and transforming each work into a playfully naughty self-portrait. In these intimate vignettes, the female figures “speak” with Picasso getting the occasional last word. But it is ultimately Jonathan Santlofer who controls the action in this painted world of artists, actors and ideas.

For additional information and images please contact Julie Brunner Cross at (212) 675 7490 or julie@pavelzoubok.com