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Chris Semtner
It is fair to say that Chris Semtner is an expert on Edgar Allen Poe having authored, co-authored or edited no fewer than eight books on the writer and has recently appeared in the BBC 4 documentary, "Edgar Allen Poe: Love, Death and Women". As curator of the Edgar Allen Poe Museum in Virginia, Semtner has been the man behind countless exhibits on Poe. The exhibition Semtner curated for the Library of Virginia – Poe: Man, Myth or Monster– was favourably reviewed by The New York Times, which commended it as a "provocative" and a "playful, robust exhibit". In addition to being an author and curator, Chris Semtner has seen his paintings enter numerous public and private collections and has seen his photography in the The Washington Post and the Daily Telegraph.
Semtner's most recent series of acrylic paintings on wood "present a dark, mysterious and dangerous world populated by victims of their own fears and desires". His paintings express the affinity, felt by Semtner, to the themes and aesthetics of writers such as Baudelaire, Kafka, Lautremont and Poe. Yet despite their dark subject matter there is a physicality and an eroticism that is communicated in Semtner's work. Semtner's most recent work,"The Black Chamber", which he is exhibiting in The Party Show depicts the final scene from Edgar Allen Poe's "The Masque of The Red Death".
Semtner will also be showing at the Science Museum of Virginia this Autumn, where he will exhibit a series of paintings exploring the beauty of dead insects.
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