NEW YORK.- French sculptor and painter Thierry Breton is featured in a June exhibition in the Northhall of Manhattan's Splashlight Studios Breton presents his recent series of sculptures and paintings, on view from Tuesday, June 5 through Saturday, June 30. The opening reception is on Tuesday, June 5, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Hours: Monday-Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Included in the exhibition at Splashlight Studios are Breton's sculpture series. The Spirit of the Letters, a series of 26 sculptures inspired by the letters of the Roman alphabet. "Choosing to work from a rigid line alphabet was a challenging proposition. This work relates strongly to the circus, with acrobats, gymnasts, and tight-rope-walkers," explains Breton. "Although conceived as a whole, each of the series comes alive in its own right. It was fun taking something as abstract as a letter and giving it a human shape. But then, is a letter ever an abstraction?" The Two Lovable Maidens, inspired the poem "The Two Good Sisters" by Charles Baudelaire from his work The Flowers of Evil. The Ophiol�ters (OPHIOLATRY : n.f. cult , adoration of snakes), a series of five bronzes, which Breton says "hints at all things hiding behind the word love . . . power plays in a couple . . . possession of the other under the pretext of love." The Bacchanates, a series of seven bronzes with plaster originals based upon the women who followed Bacchus, screaming, singing, and dancing, often in a drunken state. Breton notes that in this series he worked "on the theme of drunken dance, on the energy of movement from which leap, bound gyration, and pirouette are born. These are silhouettes, ideograms almost , a form of writing."

Also featured are Breton's recent paintings,The Dana�s, a series of ten large format paintings (approximately 63x39 inches) as well as small early sketches (8x8 inches, watercolor and gouache) that formed the basis of the series. Breton says that he was inspired by the thought that when "Zeus impregnated Dana� in the guise of a golden rain wasn't he being a painter? Gold is the light that gives life to everything."

Thierry Breton was born in 1965 in Dakar, Senegal, and grew up first in Africa then in Martinique, going to Paris to study veterinary medicine. It was there in 1985 that he first came in contact with sculpture at the studio of a pupil of Zadkine's, Noor Zad� Brenner, and he has worked with clay ever since, and showed twice at Zadkine's studio in 1985 and 1990. From then on he has devoted all his time to sculpture, showing his work in a series of exhibitions in various Parisian galleries, where he has continued to exhibit over the years (Peinture-Fra�che Gallery - rue de Bourgogne, Cathay Gallery - rue du Faubourg Saint-Honor�, Claudine Legrand Gallery- rue de Seine). Breton has also shown in Barcelona, Milan, and Deauville in Europe, and in Hudson, New York, and New York City in the United States. Recently he has shown in Montpellier, France, at the Alma Gallery, in Gstaad, Switzerland at the Nabokov Gallery, and in Paris at Madame Cariou's. He showed his Dana�s painting series in Rouen, France, in May 2006 and in Vichy, France, in July of the same year. His most recent series of bronze sculptures The Spirit of the Letters was shown in Paris in June 2006. The first of the paintings from the series Seven Wives of Bluebeard was selected by the Salon International de Montrouge (Paris) in 2006 and the Salon des Jeunes Cr�ateurs in Vichy, France. Thierry Breton also gives art classes.