FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE



Manuel Neri

New Marbles, Bronzes, and Drawings

September 5 - October 21, 2000

MANUEL NERI's latest work continues the artist's exploration of the human figure in marble, in bronze, with paint and on paper. Invoking the ideals of classical sculpture, NERI melds time-honored forms and media with a contemporary expressiveness. In his figurative work, flesh is transformed into signs that reveal as much about the artist's skillful handling of material as they do his chosen subject. At points in his compositions, the female nude assumes an uncanny flesh-and-blood presence, while other passages find it pitted and scarred with the ruggedness of weathered stone. This allusion to the passage of time reinforces antiquity's monumentality and graceful proportions as an influence on his completed works. Yet this association is denied as assertively as it is intimated with slaps of paint, gouged surfaces and unexpected bursts of color. It is the balance NERI maintains between change and permanence, verisimilitude and raw materiality that provides his work with its striking vitality.

A member of the Bay Area Figurative School, which includes artists such as Richard Diebenkorn and David Park, MANUEL NERI has been exploring the human figure in diverse mediums such as marble, bronze, plaster, graphite and oil-stick for nearly fifty years. While the painted bronzes are created in his studio in Northern California, NERI spends roughly half of the year in Carrara, Italy, where he carves his marble sculptures.

MANUEL NERI has exhibited extensively in the Europe and the United States, where he has been the subject of numerous retrospectives. His work is included in prominent public collections including, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the San Diego Museum of Art.

The exhibition will be on view at the Charles Cowles Gallery interim location at 74 Grand Street, between Greene and Wooster Streets in SoHo. Hours are 10am to 6pm, Tuesday through Saturday. There will be a reception for the artist on Thursday, September 7, from 6-8 pm.

For further information or photographs, please contact the gallery.