Conner Contemporary Art @ Art Brussels 27, contemporary art fair

April 24-27, 2009

Hall 3 – booth 3A-21

Conner Contemporary Art is especially pleased to participate in the Art Brussels contemporary art fair. Now in its 27th edition, Art Brussels is a vital European platform where leading international galleries present rising contemporary talent within a cultural atmosphere rich in art history. In the fair's Young Talent zone, we will exhibit works by Erik Thor Sandberg and Mary Coble, two gallery artists who provoke awareness with distinctive uses of the human figure.

Erik Thor Sandberg combines naturalistic imagery and metaphorical content to create beautiful, yet unsettling paintings. Generating tension between judgments of aesthetic and conscience, his surrealistic tableaux function as mirrors of the psyche, which prompt self-examination. In Cyclical Nature, his latest series of oil paintings on canvas, Sandberg calls forth nature's inherent regenerative powers to temper uncertainties of the subconscious mind. The painter creates magnificent landscape vistas as sites for the enactment of life, death and regeneration. In his inventive allegories, people and animals negotiate a tenuous balance between knowledge and irrationality. Sandberg reconciles the disturbing eventualities of his protagonists' actions by grounding them in organic elements which assert nature's boundless forces of reclamation and rebirth.

Mary Coble engages social consciousness by employing her body to examine damaging social stereotypes. Through the inscription of hate-speech in her flesh, she transforms herself into a site for collective memory. In Blood Script Coble presents documentation from her 2008 performance, where 80 insulting words were tattooed without ink on the artist before a live public audience over two days. Blood impressions on paper were made of each word to generate a monumental set of unique paintings. The Blood Script Portfolio, which contains an actual blood impression and a selection of color photographs of the performance, demonstrates Coble's innovative use of her body as an instrument for reproductive picturing and a medium for interpersonal resolution.

Art Brussels 27 will take place at the Brussels Expo, halls 1+3 – Place de Belgique, 1 / BE-1020 Brussels on April 24-27, 2009 from 11am to 7pm.

For further information or images, please contact the gallery @ 202-588-8750 / info@connercontemporary.com.