The Esther M. Klein Art Gallery is pleased to present paintings and sculptures by two artists from Wilmington, Delaware, Pahl Hluchan and Stan Smokler. Both artists are instructors at the Delaware College of Art and Design, in Wilmington.

Pahl Hluchan is a painter whose study of animation and video production informs his fantastic, surrealist, narrative works. His paintings present scenes from everyday life that are inhabited by extraordinary characters -- hammer-wielding teddy bears and armies of eggs often converge on his otherwise suburban scenes. Stan Smokler is a sculptor whose work underscores the process of exploration and discovery in art making. He creates his sculptures from scrap steel and found materials and welds pieces instinctively, allowing the work to come together as though the found scraps were participating in an act of improvisation.

Hluchan and Smokler are both represented by New York galleries, Bellwether and Kim Foster, respectively. Their work exemplifies the process of evolution and spontaneity. Hluchan may begin a painting from what he calls, "a seemingly dumb idea, from this vague memory I have from being a kid." From this starting point his work evolves into a complex narrative reminiscent of a story from an illustrated children's book. Smokler's working process depends upon the evolution of how each found piece of metal will or will not come together into a whole sculpture. Like Hluchan, Smokler often interjects humor into his work: the short, stocky thongs of a rake head will become a mustache or fanged teeth on a cubist-inspired, welded face.

Stan Smokler has been teaching at DCAD since 1998, he was a co-curator, with Dede Young, of Out of the Ordinary, a sculpture exhibition at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art in 2001. Smokler received his MFA from The Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. Pahl Hluchan has been teaching animation, painting, and drawing for the past decade at DCAD as well as University of the Arts in Philadelphia and the Savannah College of Art and Design. Hluchan received his MFA from Yale University.

Pahl Hluchan:
Bio/Resume
Images

Stan Smokler:
Bio/Resume
Images

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