Cris Worley Fine Arts is proud to announce its third solo exhibition with American artist, Paul Manes, entitled Harem. An opening reception for the artist will be held at the gallery, Saturday, October 15th, from 5-8pm. The show will run through Saturday, November 12th.
In recent years Manes’ practice has focused on vast representational subject matter: stacked and tumbling bowls, foreshortened piles of fresh cut logs, reflective pools of raindrops, fighter planes, and rugged swamps, In Harem, we see the development of an idea that was in its seedling stages in his previous exhibition at CWFA. A single painting, 78 x 104 inches, entitled, Hieder’s Balance, now in a private collection in Dallas, would be the springboard for a new endeavor into the elusive, floating web, featured entirely in this latest body of works. Manes explains, “Some of my recent paintings involve a screen or net, which implies a separation between two things. That is the lie. What reveals and what is revealed are the same thing. Without the revealer there would be no revealed.” In fact, this Buddhist philosophy, of the inevitable interconnectedness of all, is a theme well known to the artist that has persisted in various manifestations throughout his oeuvre.
Harem also comes on the heels of a monumental international exhibition in Brussels, Belgium, in September 2016, curated by art historian and filmmaker, Barbara Rose, in conjunction with the City of Brussels, and Roberto Polo Gallery. Paul Manes is one of eight American and eight Belgian artists featured together. Rose firmly establishes that the artists in the Painting After Postmodernism exhibition are making an important contribution to the continuum of the history of painting, asserting that, “…painting as an autonomous discipline can still make fresh, convincing statements as a living, evolving, significant art form that communicates humanistic values in an increasingly inhuman, technology driven globally networked world.”
Manes has had an extensive career. He studied fine art at both Lamar University in Beaumont, TX and at the Graduate School of Fine Arts, Hunter College, New York. Domestically, he has shown cross-country, in museums and galleries alike, including in Los Angeles, New York, Palm Beach, Atlanta, New Orleans, Beaumont, Austin, Dallas, and Houston. Internationally, Manes has exhibited in Milan, Monte Carlo, Rome, Paris, Bologna, Munich, and most recently in Brussels, Belgium, in the epic, Painting After Postmodernism exhibition, curated by Barbara Rose. Manes’ work is frequently collected in both the public and private sectors, and can be found in the collections of: the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Art Museum of Southeast Texas; Yoko Ono and Emeril Lagasse. His monumental work, The Entry of Christ into New York II, was most recently acquired for the lobby of the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall), in Brussels, Belgium.
