Santa Monica, CA - SHERRY FRUMKIN GALLERY is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of work by Los Angeles artist, Corey Stein, on exhibition until 24 February, 2007.

Trying to Pick up a Gallery Guyde is a series of pastel on paper works that express the artist’s frustration in finding the right match for gallery representation* in her professional life, and for a romantic partner in her personal one.  Her playful self-portraits have an undertone of wistful sadness and her use of text involving riffs on words like mate, pair, double, couple and partner, among others, reveals a highly imaginative mind.

Corey Stein’s work has always been about words. A severe epileptic from birth, she opted for risky brain surgery in 1991 to cure seizures that threatened her independence as an artist after graduation from Cal Arts in 1987.  The affected area of her brain was dangerously near her speech center.  Perhaps that accounts for her heightened awareness of the strange ways in which we use the same word for multiple meanings.  When pressed to make a statement about her work, Stein responds that “English is my second language and Pantomime is my first….What is normal? What is idiotic? And who makes the rules?”

In previous solo exhibitions with the gallery in 1992 and 1993, Stein’s quasi-autobiographical works were a delightful visual and linguistic visual stream of conscious tour de force.  She was a student of John Baldessari who called her images “unadulterated and joyful displays of exuberance that burst forth with indelible icons that burn into one’s mind –imprinted forever.”

Visit Sherry Frumkin Gallery at : www.frumkingallery.com/