ENGLAND/FRANCE/GERMANY
DUNCAN SWANN/CRISTOF IVORÉ/MARTIN EDER
September 17 – October 29, 2005
Opening Reception Saturday, September 17, 6 – 8pm

Over the last decade a number of talented and adventurous painters have emerged from Europe, and the Michael Kohn Gallery will show three of them. Each of these artists in this show works in a representational style, albeit with vastly different results. This exhibition will bring together three painters from three different countries and give the viewer a look at current European trends in painting.

DUNCAN SWANN is a recent graduate of the Royal College of Art, London, and has exhibited his work at the Leeds Metropolitan Gallery. Swann’s paintings at first glance seem like illustrations from the Brothers Grimm where enigmatic figures inhabit a medieval-like landscape. But the use of strong colors and cryptic action reveal Swann’s paintings as a manifestation of distinctly unique contemporary art.

CRISTOF YVORÉ lives and works in France but exhibits his work with Zeno X gallery in Antwerp, Belgium. As Valerie Bourdel states in her recent catalogue, “Cristof Yvoré’s work brings to mind early Cezanne, Magritte in his “Vache” period, Picabia and Guston, all of whom were at odds with current aesthetic trends. Yvoré’s paintings are not just pictures, his subjects are deliberately incongruous, and his challenging new forms combine brutality, anxiety and cockiness: this is a route full of breaks and paradoxes.”

MARTIN EDER has gained an international reputation for his paintings and watercolors of naked women taken from the pages of soft porn magazines, while concurrently he paints Hallmark card sweet portraits of dogs and cats. There is a clear tendency toward using kitsch as subject matter and yet his painterly proficiency keeps his work in high demand among collectors and curators.