ROB VAN ERVE

Operae Pretium Est

September 6 - October 13, 2012
Reception: Sat., Oct 6th from 4pm to 6pm

For Operae Pretium Est, Rob van Erve transforms the gallery with a monumental golden staircase, a group of sculptures (one that bisects the gallery wall), and a series of works on paper. As is the case for all of van Erve’s work, the exhibition involves the mining of other disciplines including literature, music and theatre. 

Luminous, undulating surfaces make up an architectural installation that is almost impossibly balanced between structural simplicity and feats of engineering. Van Erve requires the viewer to ascend and then descend a flight of steps and to gaze through carved out openings in the gallery wall, taking a journey full of romantic “notions” of both the tangible and the intangible variety. The mixed media works on paper add a somewhat narrative thread, as the artist has incorporated altered gelatin silver prints and negatives from throughout his career. These pieces are at once bizarre and evocative, situated somewhere between the starry-eyed and the star-crossed.

Rob van Erve has shown internationally at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum; the Kao Yuan Art Center, Kaohsiung, Taiwan; Avant-Garde Documenta II, Taipei, Taiwan; Gallerie De Verschijning, Netherlands; and Nederlands Textielmuseum as well as extensively in New York at Staff Gallery, the Islip Art Museum, The American Academy of Arts and Letters, Gallery 128, Trans Hudson Gallery and the Sears-Peyton Gallery, among others. His work has been discussed in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine and White Hot Magazine. Rob van Erve received an M.F.A. from the Academy for Art and Education, Tilburg, the Netherlands and an MFA from Ohio State University. He was born in Tilburg, the Netherlands and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.