**DAN MANDELBAUM:MEANDROS
SEPTEMBER 1 - OCTOBER 2 **

For the people of ancient Greece, the Meandros motif symbolized eternity and the continuous flow of human life. This unbroken, interlocking pattern is synonymous with unity and is an apt metaphor for Dan Mandelbaum’s most recent work.

Mandelbaum’s labyrinthian wall works are laden with personal symbols that are accessible to any viewer–the inscriptions on the ceramic tiles are primitive, intuitive, and immediate in their depictions of characters, animals, figures, and celestial bodies.

The articulated ceramic squares form building blocks for a new visual language, one that is spontaneously drawn, carved, molded, stippled, reproduced, and glazed, all the while creating a purposeful, strident pattern. Other tiles are formed through the imprinting of objects Mandelbaum finds on his daily walks to his studio, autobiographically recording time and space for visceral presentation. These playful compositions straddle ancient tablets and modern day circuit boards, they may be hung as altarpieces or deciphered as texts and plugged in as codes– they tell the story of a modern life. There is an inherent push and pull within the work–the engraved and the written, and the convex, the push of certain forms and expressions from the ceramic, jutting out as if attempting to make the leap to sculpture.

Mandelbaum’s statuettes manifest the jump from slabs to a multi dimensional realm. Gesturally modeled figures and animals inhabit the space in a monochromatic spectrum. The work is divided, half are intricately spiky, pinched, caricatures of riders, pets, dragons, and other creatures. On the other side of the exhibition space are their sculptural foils: amorphous and abstracted figures, these soft and blobular shapes offset the more enunciated statuary. Two tall curvy rabbits flank a cartoon flower that overlooks this garden of freeform shapes. These melting forms invite the eyes to meander in and out the sculptural arrangements, echoing the pathways of the wall tiles.