John Connelly Presents
625 West 27th Street, 212-337-9563
Chelsea
September 5 - October 11, 2008
Reception: Friday, September 5, 6 - 8 PM
Web Site
RK: Many contemporary painters rely on a singular and immediately identifiable style. You avoid this. Why?
MZ: Style is the way you hold your cigarette or pronounce your r’s. Style emerges out of a myriad of decisions rather like an odor emanating from a pile of clothing.
I read Derrida before I read Plato, so even notions of linearity and one-way-ness in history are somewhat malleable to m e. A way to contextualize myself and my actions. I was searching for language. Painting offers a long, rich tradition of meaningful language. As Nietzsche has written, the danger is if we use that history to the detriment of life. To me, life comes first.
Consisting of a selection of abstract paintings on canvas, this exhibition impresses on the viewer a deep romanticism for painting on the part of the artist. There are strikingly visible appropriations of historical hallmarks in Zuckerman’s stylistic technique. An essential element of her body of work thus far is a calculated jest with the idea of the importance of an artist’s visible style. In fact Zuckerman pursues categorically different, sometimes opposed, paths of painting at the same time. Without any true context outside of themselves, her paintings shoulder the weight of art history, especially abstraction.