BravinLee programs is pleased to present The Liars and The Moonstruck, works on paper by Douglas Florian.

The works in this exhibition are part of the series titled “Sefer Shel Or”, Hebrew for “The Book of Light”. Florian has worked on this body of work for the past eight years; The Liars and The Moonstruck will contain selected works from the series. Sefer Shel Or is organized into a sub-series of books, each of which contains 613 drawings, a number chosen for its reference to the 613 commandments or mitzvot in the Torah.

Florian paints with gouache on simple sheets of cut paper often adding small elements of collage. Composed on impulse, Florian’s abstract forms become highly suggestive archetypal Jungian glyphs, a simplified language of universality.

Drawing on saturated color Florian’s forms and surfaces take on a strangely complex psychology. Running the emotional gamut, from sadness and anxiety to great joy, Florian’s work represents a cast of characters out of elements of color, form and paper. In all of these drawings Florian’s poetic quirkiness and good humor remain evident.

As the artist writes:

“My drawings are abstract regressionist… movingly still, but still moving, emotional notions about motion, configurations of constellations… both drawn and withdrawn. They collect their own thoughts and have a mind of their own.”

Douglas Florian lives and works in New York City. He has had solo exhibitions at Yeshiva University Museum and at the University of the Arts in Pennsylvania. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Drawing Center, The Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, and at The New York State Museum at Albany. The artist is also well known for his illustrated children’s books.