Seth Michael Forman “Man, Boulders and Trees”

frosch & portmann

poster for Seth Michael Forman “Man, Boulders and Trees”

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frosch&portmann presents Man, Boulders and Trees, New York based Seth Michael Forman’s third solo exhibition with the gallery.

Seth Michael Forman’s paintings are at once inviting and unsettling, nostalgic and familiar, yet somehow not. Each painting seems to invite the viewer to ponder the simplicity of the images—landscapes with only one or two figures present—only to slowly realize that something is amiss.

The title of the painting “Man, Boulders and Trees,” after which this exhibition is eponymously titled, is simply a description of the elements depicted in the painting. Yet this small, dark, and almost claustrophobic image’s true subject seems to be the emotional intensity that one experiences from its unusual composition. What exactly is that man doing, almost hidden behind a cluster of weighty boulders at night?
In “My Deer,” the middle-aged man in a sweatshirt isn’t kissing a deer, is he? In “Meeting on Bear Hill,” it’s clear that a man has met up with a black bear, but why is the man as naked as the bear? At first glance they are wrestling, perhaps a Romantic depiction of “man against nature”. Or is this moonlit evening more appropriate for lovers dancing on the snow-covered hill? And is that a smile on that bear’s face, who bares neither teeth nor claws?

And it is not just the subject of these paintings that draws one’s attention. It is also the technique. These oil paintings are unabashedly and refreshingly old-fashioned. At the same time, the technique fits the content: an internal world of dreams, memories, and imagination.

Seth Michael Forman was born in Brooklyn, New York. His paintings have been included in over fifty exhibitions, including “Picturing the Modern Amazon” at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and have been featured on “State of the Arts,” a PBS broadcast. The New York Foundation for the Arts has twice awarded him a Painting Fellowship. He currently teaches Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and at the Westchester Center for the Arts in White Plains, NY.

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Schedule

from September 09, 2015 to October 18, 2015

Opening Reception on 2015-09-09 from 18:00 to 20:00

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