Wish You Were Here Andrej Dubravsky, Oana Farcas and Gideon Kiefer

June 28 – August 4, 2012 Reception Opening: Thursday, June 28, 2012, 6 – 8pm

Ana Cristea Gallery is pleased to present “Wish You Were Here,” a summer show of three artists from Slovakia, Romania and Belgium.

The works of Andrej Dubravsky, Oana Farcas and Gideon Kiefer are masterfully painted and reflect their individual training at the highest levels of the fine art academy. Whether billboard or postcard-sized, the works command the viewer’s attention through colors, lively settings and inspired brushwork. The narratives in these works honor the role of the natural world and self-selected communities. A lake at summer camp, an artist studio or laboratory environment might appear familiar initially, but the evident strange® element in all three artists’ works give them charge and wisdom.

Andrej Dubravsky, born 1987 in Slovakia, employs his signature bunny rabbit ears suggesting the vulnerability of young boys away from their guardians. Whether rowing, posing or hanging out, the boys look interchangeable but will individuate – and not all of them will turn out to be good people. Mainly centered on the male body, Dubravsky’s artistic interests match with the up-to-date rules of popular culture: narcissistic self-presentation and inquiries of the own identity.

Oana Farcas (b. 1981) travels back into art history, by inserting her ideas and sometimes her own self into the studios of her painting heroes – “I worship you Bacon, Freud and Picasso, but I am also taking my place in the lineage.” The artistic dialogue created with these iconic figures of modern art is a reassurance of the artist’s autonomy towards an ethical approach. In this new body of work Farcas is concerned with the connection between the artist and his medium. Whether she is analyzing the artist’s studio, his community, his sources of inspiration or simply the act of painting, the works capture the essence of the creating process.

Gideon Kiefer (b. 1970) depicts inspectors and figures in white lab coats in that empty moment of waiting for the results. The curiously small and quizzical figures present the viewer in-wait with not a different concern or answer but a humbling proposition meanwhile: “The world may be flat or round but we know already it is mysterious and perhaps haunted.” Gideon Kiefer’s work is mostly about the relativity of freedom and the tragic of powerlessness. In his drawings so-called people with power – doctors, scientists, businessmen… – seem to be in control of their world. But in an alienating way Kiefer emphasizes that power is immanently related to impotency and therefore relative. The recurring network of perspective and composition lines in his work are like a metaphor for structure, order and depth, but can also be interpreted as a tangle, as a grid in which the system is likely to get trapped.

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