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ARTCAT



David Stern: Five Paintings

Messineo Art Projects/Wyman Contemporary
511 West 25th Street, No. 504, 212.414.0827
Chelsea
January 27 - March 19, 2011
Reception: Thursday, January 27, 6 - 8 PM
Web Site


In this recent series of paintings entitled “wild child” David Stern contemplates the various stages of adolescence, such as autonomy and identity. Each painting references the struggle of the “rite of passage” between father and son. Three distinct phases characterize this allegorical drama; separation, transition and re-incorporation. In Root, a defiant seated figure, withdrawn, detached, cut off from familial ties, challenges authority – confident in his knowledge of life. The stages of experiential reality unfolds in Warrior, where anger and fury fuel a seemingly endless feed of wild hallucinated energy. Flailing limbs kick-up rich clods of pigment taken from freshly applied earth or dried mud puddles. The material of the surface releases the images. Completing the cycle – What It Is, signals pure exhaustion, lines have been drawn, battles have been lost, truces are called- a state of acceptance prevails. According to Stern each painting is a vehicle of spiritual expression, and represents the realities of the encompassing world.

Born in Essen, Germany in 1956, Stern studied at the prestigious Düsseldorf Art Academy in Düsseldorf, Germany from 1980-82. He emigrated to New York in 1995 and became naturalized in 2000. In 2008-09 David Stern: The American Years (1995-2008) opened to record crowds at the Yeshiva University Museum in New York. The exhibit is currently traveling to other national venues.

Stern’s work is included in numerous public and private collections in the United States, Europe and Asia such as: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Kunstsammlung, Universitat Göttingen, Germany, The National Museum, Poznan, Poland and the US Embassy in Vienna, Austria.

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