Gallery | 49 is pleased to present "Abstract Gamma Hyphen", an exhibition of sculptures, paintings and drawings by the celebrated British-Romanian artist Paul Neagu. The exhibition, which opens to the public on Thursday, April 8, 2004 will be the first solo show of Paul Neagu at Gallery I 49 and the most recent since his retrospective last year at Tate Britain.

The works on display address the subject of the Hyphen, which has occupied the artist for several decades and span a period from 1975 to 2001. In addition to the series of "Hyphen" sculptures created in steel, wood, and the related graphic works, the exhibition will also include a small selection of paintings and drawings from Neagu's earlier "Anthropocosmos" series, 1971-73. The metaphysical "Hyphen" shapes were originally developed in the late 1960's in the context of Neagu's performances and were first presented in 1975 at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford. Geometrically, the structures share a grammar of typical configurations and relationships. The Hyphen (from the Greek "together") connects earth and sky, time and space, by taking us through three different stages: the triangle ("Blind Bite"), the rectangle ("Horizontal Rain"), and, finally, the Spiral (realization of freedom).

In their "rudimentary" architecture Neagu's hyphens resemble ploughs or other simple agricultural tools and are related to the same vernacular Romanian peasant tradition which was the foremost inspiration in Brancusi's work. As the artist declares "Hyphen is my recurrent instrument of work as the plough is for the farmer. Conceptually it relates the essence of the earth to the body of man and to the ideas of the harvest." Much has been discussed about the Brancusian correspondence in Neagu's work, and indeed he is one among Romanian artists to have integrated and pushed forward Brancusi's heritage without ever producing imitative work.

Neagu's work is deeply engaged with the philosophies of Nietzche, Heidegger and Derrida and stands as a link between the abstract world of ideas and the solidity of the physical world. As Donald Kuspit remarks, "From the start, Neagu was among the most imaginative avant-garde innovators, all the more so because his works make a conceptual point without sacrificing physical presence. His work is uncategorizable because it cuts through avant-garde preconceptions while assimilating its conventions into his own radical vision of the relationship of art and mind."

Born in 1938 in Bucharest, Paul Neagu has graduated from the Nicolae Grigorescu Art Institute in 1965. He settled in England in 1969 as a result of one of those pioneering shows with Joseph Beuys and Tadeusz Kantor organized by Richard Demarco in the late 60's and early 70's. Since his establishment in London, Paul Neagu has been regarded as one of the most intriguing contemporary British artists - "an unclassifiable independent" as Paul Overy has once called him. Over the years he had pursued a multi-layered career as a visual artist, poet, philosopher, performance artist and metaphysician and taught some of the most appreciated British sculptors of the last two decades such as Tony Cragg, Anish Kapoor, Richard Deacon, Anthony Gormely and Rachel Whiteread.

Neagu's work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, the Whitechapel Gallery, the Serpentine Gallery, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) London, Queens Museum of Art, New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, The National Museum
of Art Bucharest, the Museum of Modern Art Ljuibliana, Slovenia and the Venice Biennale. His sculptures, drawings and recorded performances are included in numerous public and museum collection such as Tate Gallery, British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Philadelphia Art Museum, Tochigi Museum, Japan and The National Museum of Art, Bucharest, Romania among others. Last Spring Neagu's retrospective exhibition, "Paul Neagu: Display of the Artist's Early Work", was presented at The Tate Britain Gallery in London.

Paul Neagu's "Abstract Gamma Hyphen" exhibition will be on display through May 4, 2004. For further information or visual material please contact Monica A. Rotaru at 212.767.0855 or info@gallery49.com