NEW YORK, N.Y.- The solo exhibition by French sculptor and painter Thierry Breton is on view in the North Hall of Manhattan's Splashlight Studios through Saturday, June 30. Hours: Monday-Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. From the exhibition, six sculptures--La Lune Offensée, Ophiol âtrie Lutte, Ophiolâtrie Affection , Ophiolâtrie Danse, Bacchante III, Bacchante V-- have been chosen to be included in a group show at Galerie Mourlot ( www.galeriemourlot.com), located at 16 East 79th Street, New York City. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

The exhibition at Splashlight Studios features Breton's sculpture series. The Spirit of the Letters, a series of 26 sculptures inspired by the letters of the roman alphabet. "Choosing to work from a rigid line alphabet was a challenging proposition. This work relates strongly to the circus, with acrobats, gymnasts, and tight-rope-walkers," explains Breton. "Although conceived as a whole, each of the series comes alive in its own right. It was fun taking something as abstract as a letter and giving it a human shape. But then, is a letter ever an abstraction?" The Two Lovable Maidens, inspired the poem "The Two Good Sisters" by Charles Baudelaire from his work The Flowers of Evil . Ophiolâtrie (OPHIOLATRY : n.f. cult , adoration of snakes), a series of five bronzes, which Breton says "hints at all things hiding behind the word love . . . power plays in a couple . . . possession of the other under the pretext of love." The Bacchanates, a series of seven bronzes with plaster originals based upon the women who followed Bacchus, screaming, singing, and dancing, often in a drunken state. Breton notes that in this series he worked "on the theme of drunken dance, on the energy of movement from which leap, bound gyration, and pirouette are born. These are silhouettes, ideograms almost , a form of writing."

Also featured are Breton's recent paintings, The Danaës, a series of ten large format paintings (approximately 63x39 inches) . Breton says that he was inspired by the thought that when "Zeus impregnated Danaë in the guise of a golden rain wasn't he being a painter? Gold is the light that gives life to everything."

Thierry Breton was born in 1965 in Dakar, Senegal, and grew up first in Africa then in Martinique, going to Paris to study veterinary medicine. It was there in 1985 that he first came in contact with sculpture at the studio of a pupil of Zadkine's, Noor Zadé Brenner, and he has worked with clay ever since, showing twice at Zadkine's studio in 1985 and 1990. Since then on he has devoted all his time to sculpture, showing his work in a series of exhibitions in various Parisian galleries, where he has continued to exhibit over the years (Peinture-Fraîche Gallery - rue de Bourgogne, Cathay Gallery - rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Claudine Legrand Gallery- rue de Seine). Breton has also shown in Barcelona, Milan, and Deauville in Europe, and in Hudson, New York, and New York City in the United States. Recently he has shown in Montpellier, France, at the Alma Gallery, in Gstaad, Switzerland at the Nabokov Gallery, and in Paris at Madame Cariou's. He exhibited his painting series, The Danaës, in Rouen and Vichy, France last year. His most recent series of bronze sculptures The Spirit of the Letters was shown in Paris in June 2006. The first of the paintings from the series Seven Wives of Bluebeard was selected by the Salon International de Montrouge (Paris) in 2006 and the Salon des Jeunes Créateurs in Vichy, France. Thierry Breton also gives art classes.