☛ Conner Contemporary Art: “Fleet” by Erik Thor Sandberg, oil on canvas, 60″ x 48″, 2009

Erik Thor Sandberg’s six richly sculptural, masterfully executed figurative paintings in “Cyclical Nature” feature composition both witty and, with their flagrant nudity, engagingly confrontational. More psychologically probing and viscerally introspective than the works in his 2006 show, “Contrary” –in which nearly nude figures represented vanity, vice, and virtue–these paintings are among his strongest to date, and possess a painterly finish on par with the work of Lisa Yuskavage and John Currin. […]
In “Fleet”, a woman seated on a grassy, daisy-covered mound straps a rabbit to her foot like a roller skate. The concentrated gaze on her face, rendered with the doughy muscularity of a Jan Gossart Madonna, underscores her misguided deliberateness in pursuing life’s follies. (Artforum, Review: “Erik Thor Sandberg. Conner Contemporary”, Washington, D.C., by Nord Wennerstrom, PDF)

Erik Thor Sandberg was born in Quantico, VA, 1975. He lives and works in Washington, DC. For more about him and his work, one can visit his official website (Flash is required).