James Graham & Sons presents an exhibition of recent paintings by John Zinsser.

Zinsser’s current exhibition follows his installation of drawings in our main gallery last season, Art Dealer Archipelagoes, which charted the history of New York’s post-war gallery development through a series of “maps.” These new works on canvas again source that history, but through strictly formalist and quotational terms. As Zinsser describes, “Early attempts, with my own hand- formulated hyper-physical paint, made the individual brushstrokes start to look more like ‘Ryman-on-steroids.’ Not only is impasto passage exaggerated, and made specific – color is much more chromatic, as well.”

The two-color works play with conventions from Abstract Expressionism, Pop and Monochrome painting traditions. In their startling hyper-materiality, they pose anew questions of abstraction and its possible meanings.

Zinsser’s work is currently included in the exhibit at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, titled Same: Difference curated by Julien Robeson and Robert Cozzolino. His work has been recently reviewed by The New York Times, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, and The New Yorker. Zinsser teaches at The New School and the New York Academy of Art.