Global Chaos, Healing Art:
The Works of Sam
Sebren
by Jay Blotcher
...reserving the evenings for the electric
social scene. Wong found his roommate a position as gallery
assistant at Semaphore Gallery, one of the first SoHo galleries
to open a branch in the East Village, now an internationally
recognized locus for a growing, urgent, and often nihilistic
fin-de-siecle movement.
Sebren learned from his mentor, absorbing
Wong’s preference for dark colors and equally dark themes.
He began to imbue his artistic work with the vision of a sociologist,
capturing the lively contradictions of East Village life in
a series of stark, realistic portraits; in one particular
work, a friend is holding an immense pot of spaghetti in the
trash-filled street, while in the background street people
huddle on the corners. Sebren was unknowingly echoing the
mission of Jacob Riis, whose photographic documentation of
squalid East Village scenes a century ago would spearhead
widespread reformation. Soon, he was getting solo shows in
some of the leading East Village galleries: B-Side, La MaMa
and Pene DuBois, garnering praise from fellow artists and
write-ups in arts weeklies, if not fortune and fame.
After 15 years in Manhattan, Sebren moved
north to Greene County, where he has spent the past eight
years. Predictably, the change of scenery effected a change
in his subject matter. “Now I’m in more open spaces
so it is opening up my work a little bit,” he said,
acknowledging a transition from an earlier style of composition
Sebren termed “claustrophobic chaos.” But his
Manhattan work habits are hard to shake. “There is still
a level of obsessiveness in the way I work.” For
the perennial social activist, his rural home affords numerous
inspirations for new art pieces...CONTINUE....
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