The Pursuit of Happiness December 1, 2006

Sarah Bowen Gallery is delighted to present "The Pursuit of Happiness", featuring ten New York–based artists: John Bowman, Diane Carr, Rebecca E. Chamberlain, Jonny Detiger, Vandana Jain, Tracy Nakayama, Alexander Reyna, Kent Rogowksi, Carol Shadford, and Jennifer Sullivan. The Pursuit of Happiness explores representations of happiness in contemporary art as a question or proposition more than a definitive statement. Some works openly welcome this fleeting emotion into their iconography, while others harbor skepticism toward it by examining false notions of happiness in a consumer-driven society. (These conflicting views are often seen within the same work.) Other artists use tropes of happiness as a formal launching point into other areas. Whether happiness is bright colors, pretty pictures, love, sex, food, or a state of being is debatable; it is clear that happiness is an imperative motivating factor in human behavior, and therefore it is also a motivating factor in art.

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