Michael Hernandez de Luna: A Tiger’s Tale | Cheonae Kim | Michael Byron: 9.17-10.09.2009-Collages...

Philip Slein Gallery is pleased to present the thought-provoking artwork of venerable Chicagoan Michael Hernandez de Luna. Though steeped in controversy, Hernandez de Luna’s activist vision largely concerns itself with satirically exposing contemporary social disorder and moral misconduct. His first exhibition at the Slein Gallery, titled A Tiger’s Tale, will highlight pieces about Tiger Woods and Mark McGwire amongst an array of work commemorating infidelity and body enhancement.

Hernandez de Luna engages in a form of conceptual art called “mail art.” He creates realistic looking stamp pages on a computer, perforates the stamps and then affixes them one at a time to an appropriately selected envelope, and addressing it to himself, sends the envelope to any number of willing collaborators around the world to be posted and sent back to its maker. The work is performance art--collective performances in-clude a post office that periodically prosecutes Hernandez de Luna for involving them in the process. Needless to say, the artist and his craft are often mistaken as criminal. He and his work have been derogatively classified with an amazing array of descriptive tagging. By operating from a personal conviction that no subject is taboo, Hernandez de Luna relentlessly piques at any social condition which has a festering appearance and draws our attention to its irony, its incorrectness, and ultimately, if unacknowledged, its destructiveness.

In addition to Hernandez de Luna, the gallery will present a show of new small-scale work by the noted minimalist painter Cheonae Kim. The work continues Cheonae’s exploration of the effect of color on the perception of scale, proportion, and space. The small scale creates an intimacy that draws the viewer into the works. They are perfectly crafted wooden objects in the shape of paintings that can be viewed, from multiple angles, as either flat or three-dimensional. They are objects of mystery, and like all great art, objects of contemplation. Cheonae says she wants to “elevate the human spirit through line, form, space and color.”

A selection from Michael Byron’s new series, 9.17-10.09.2009-Collages from India, continues the artist’s interest in the immediacy of the genre. Made during a recent trip to India, the series captures the vibrancy and riotous color that define the subcontinent’s printed media. The result is a series that combines the deft touch of Indian Miniatures with the raucous poetry of Dada and Surrealism.

Who: The Philip Slein Gallery

Phone: 314.621.4634

Hours: Tues.-Sat. 10am-5pm

When: Reception and Book Signing: Friday, March 19th 2010, 6-9pm runs through April 24th

Where: 1319 Washington Ave. Downtown St. Louis

Cost: Free and open to the public.