Ana Cristea Gallery is pleased to present Portraits of Ambiguity, a group show featuring the work of European artists Razvan Boar, Christian Schoeler, Alexander Tinei and George Young. All four share a lack of interest in the heroic vein of conventionally ‘masculine’ art; instead, their work is concerned with an exploration of vulnerability, subtlety, ambiguity, and fragility.

Christian Schoeler and Alexander Tinei are each known for their distinctive approaches to portraiture. Schoeler creates lushly-painted oils and watercolors of beautiful, often slightly androgynous young men; the subjects he depicts are vaguely erotic but seem to exist in a timeless and placeless world of reverie. Tinei’s portraits have a much harder edge—the people he depicts are always physically ‘marked,’ and in his most recent work, their faces are often obscured. Perpetually concerned with identity (especially ‘outsider’ identity), Tinei’s subjects are simultaneously recognizable and unrecognizable, familiar and yet very strange.

George Young and Razvan Boar’s paintings go beyond portraiture in the traditional sense; they are not particularly concerned with the depiction of individuals as such. The figures and faces in Young’s works on paper are signifiers, but what exactly they signify is left intentionally ambiguous. It is also significant that Young’s paintings feel deliberately humble aesthetically; they say all they wish to say with a minimum of physical means. Boar’s drawings, paintings, and collages have a similarly ‘sketchy’ quality; his images are fragmented, reflecting the confusion and dislocations of what can sometimes feel like a dissolving world.

Razvan Boar (b. 1982; lives and works in Bucharest, Romania) is currently completing his MFA in painting at the National University of Art in Bucharest. Boar is one of the most promising and original talents emerging from a new generation of painters in Romania, a country which has recently produced an important movement in contemporary painting.

Christian Schoeler (b. 1978 in Germany; lives and works in Düsseldorf) studied at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts with Prof. Günther Förg. His work has been exhibited throughout Germany and in London, Paris, Sao Paulo, and Miami. In 2009-10, he collaborated with Louis Vuitton to produce a one-of-a-kind painted suit and a line of hand-painted leather bags. This past year, Schoeler’s work appeared in London-based exhibitions featuring the Hugo & Carla Brown Collection and the Franks-Suss Collection.

Alexander Tinei (b. 1967 in the Republic of Moldova; currently based in Budapest, Hungary) had his first U.S. solo show at Ana Cristea in early 2010. Shortly after, the gallery was invited to present a solo show of his work at the March 2010 edition of VOLTA New York. Tinei will be included in the forthcoming book Vitamin P2: New Perspectives in Painting and his work will be presented at the 2011 Prague Biennale.

George Young (b. 1981; lives and works in London) is a 2008 graduate of the Royal College of Art who has already exhibited in London, Milan, Prague, Brussels, and Los Angeles. He was recently included in a Modern Painters feature on the “9 Artists You Need to Watch” (2011) and his work is currently on display as part of The Shape We’re In, a major London-based exhibition featuring works from the renowned Zabludowicz Collection.

For additional information, please contact Ana Cristea Gallery at (212) 904-1100 or at [email protected] The gallery is located at 521 West 26th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues and is open from Tuesday through Saturday from 11am to 6pm.