NEW YORK, NY.- Sperone Westwater presents Andrew Sendor: “Delicates,” an exhibition of new paintings, drawings, and a film. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.
“Delicates” reveals a sprawling network of multi-layered narratives that exist in anachronistic space. The exhibition takes its name from Delicates, an esoteric shop that, in Sendor’s mythology, plays host to an eccentric cast of characters involved in performances that evoke mysticism and the occult. Amongst these are the store’s proprietor Boris Flumzy and Miss Ecstasy (aka Seda Mercedes), one of his spiritual advisors. These characters, many of whom operate outside of societal norms, inhabit a world of the artist’s creation – moving between media and appearing throughout the exhibition.
Sendor's work toys with the interrelation of photorealism and the evolution of the moving image. His paintings - executed in a reduced black, white, and grey palette - serve as artifacts of arrested movement. They appear as scenes from the past even as their titles position them as stills from fictive documentaries and installation photographs of exhibitions yet unstaged. A series of drawings feature “replicas of stills” from fantasy interview sessions conducted with the characters. Sendor engages in a spirited visual trickery: although two images drawn side by side may appear identical, slight differences between the two call to mind an advancing film reel.
The exhibition also includes FENOMENO, a 13-minute video that represents the artist’s first foray into filmmaking. The film chronicles a series of enigmatic rituals performed by Sendor's band of aberrant mystics. FENOMENO culminates in a spiritual cleansing ceremony in which Flumzy and his colleagues burn the titular protagonist in effigy inside a river canyon while Fenomeno purges painful fragments of his id in traumatic flashbacks.
“Delicates” presents a series of stories suspended mid-telling, and attempts to tie up this web of interconnected figures prove futile. Employing an aesthetic vocabulary including performance, fiction, concept and craft, this exhibition circles back on itself, inviting the viewer to contemplate the impossible pocket of time in which Sendor's characters exist.
Born in 1977, Sendor lives and works in New York City. He has presented solo gallery exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, and Copenhagen. His works have been included in numerous museum exhibitions, including the Funen Art Museum, Odense, Denmark; Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, New York; Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, Tennessee; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; and the ARKEN Museum of Art, Ishøj, Denmark. In 2014, Sendor presented a solo exhibition in conjunction with his residency at The Wright Museum, Beloit College. In November 2015, the Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University will mount a solo exhibition. His works are in private and public collections worldwide.
A catalogue will be published on the occasion of the exhibition with an essay by Michael Rush.
