Caren Golden Fine Art is pleased to present “Based on a True Story,” Andrew Sendor’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. This body of work revolves around an ambitious, self-referential discussion about the practice and history of painting. Each painting features an interior exhibition space in which video art, paintings, photographs and, absurdly, human being as art, reside. Through both his content and the painting processes employed, Sendor considers the historical function of the act of painting—as a mimetic device, as a means of expression, and as an agent of desire. Sendor’s new paintings speculate as to what would happen if taxidermed humans were put on display as art. Would this act demonstrate a new frontier, or an unmentionable taboo? If this is the last content-based taboo left in the realm of art, then what does a painted representation of the act convey?

Sendor’s work asks why, when nothing presented within its walls is considered too outrageous, the site of a museum remains so sacred. His work investigates these circumstances by depicting the figure as macabre sculptures, presented either on pedestals or in museum display cabinets in the isolation of supposed museum spaces. While Sendor’s painting project is rooted in a world of ideas and difficult questions, his loaded and intense imagery evokes a more visceral reaction from the viewer. In their exquisitely rendered beauty and compositional poise, these paintings thrive on the same attraction-versus-repulsion dynamic that drove the work of such painters as Goya, Gorky and Bacon. In addition to this dichotomy of the senses, Sendor puts forth these sharply socio-psychological dialogues and continues to push the limits of his in-depth involvement with representational painting.

Andrew Sendor’s work has been featured in museum exhibitions including “Phantasmania” at the Kemper Museum of Art in Kansas City, MO, “MAD LOVE” at the Arken Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, Denmark, and “XS-Size Matters” at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in Peekskill, NY, which traveled to the Knoxville Museum of Art in Knoxville, TN. In addition to having a solo show at Mogadishni Gallery in Copenhagen, Denmark in the Fall of 2007,¬ his work has been presented in “Salon Nouveau” at the Engholm Engelhorn Galerie in Vienna, Austria and is currently on view in the “All Too Human: Young American Painters” at Schuebbe Projects in Dusseldorf, Germany. Sendor’s work has been featured in numerous publications including Art in America, New American Painters, Art Premium and M Magazine. His third solo exhibition with Caren Golden Fine Art, “Based on a True Story,” will be on view in the gallery from April 9 through May 16, 2009.