Tamar Zinn

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Artist’s Statement

 

As a visual artist, I am driven by curiosity about what is possible, rather than seeking certainty. By working intuitively and without a preconceived endpoint, I let the work lead the way. The thread that runs through my paintings and drawings is the embrace of the transitory nature of our experiences. While recent paintings have centered on shifting atmospheric sensations, my drawings are a visual manifestation of breath and gesture.

In my search for quiet in an increasingly tumultuous world, several years ago I began a daily practice of sitting in stillness, open to whatever came into view from behind closed eyes. In two recent painting series, Behind Closed Eyes and Where I Find Myself, I’ve gravitated towards the ineffable sensations I experience during this daily period of reflective solitude. Particles of light slowly rearrange themselves across the field, colors shimmer and recede, and there is a never-ending flow between stillness and drama. Having shifted from painting singular images to multi-panel installations, the paintings increasingly reflect the belief that nothing is fixed, and that our perceptions are comprised of a multiplicity of moments.

Since I am seduced by light but also drawn to aspects of formalism, finding a balance between the two keeps the work in a state of tension until each element seems to find its place. The formal structure of the multi-panel paintings allows me to place unique sensory experiences side by side and present them as one. And ultimately, it is the imposition of this structure that gives me the freedom to fix in place that which is impermanent.

In my drawings, my embrace of both transitory and formal concerns is revealed through the interaction between gesture and the field. Attention to the unique nature of the field for each series of drawings grounds me in formal structure. Making the field is a slow and methodical process in which multiple layers of pigmented charcoal are gently rubbed into the surface of the paper. It is only once the field is established that I turn my attention to drawing the lines, an act that is filled with risk and where I feel most exposed.

For me, to draw is to breathe and to breathe is to experience a fullness of self. In this way, my drawings are rooted in the time of their making. Recent drawing series have reflected a dance between line and space — each helps to define the other. Each gesture is a choreography of movements, and once made, the marks may be altered but all that was there remains. While the gestures may be evocative of many things, my drawings depict nothing in particular.

Tamar Zinn is a visual artist whose work balances light-infused romanticism and reductive structure. Both painting and drawing are integral to her studio practice and distinct in both intention and process. Recent exhibits of Zinn’s work include Where I find myself, a 2021 solo exhibit of paintings at Markel Fine Arts, NYC, and Liminal Space, a 4-person show at Bryant Street Gallery, Palo Alto, in 2020 where Zinn exhibited a selection of drawings. Zinn has curated several group exhibitions and periodically blogs about contemporary art. Her work is included in corporate and private collections throughout the United States.

Alex Stark

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Artist’s Statement

My work considers memory, vision and physicality. I have double vision and see dimensionality differently. When I create a space, I think of the eye and mind processing, understanding, and navigating the pictorial space. I self identify with the bird and birds have been appearing in my work as symbols for many years. Birds have graceful and majestic qualities: long necks, delicate feet and graceful forms but, are also fragile and clumsy on the ground. Birds have the unique perspective of flight, allowing them to travel, and explore an alternative point of view. My most recent work focuses on an intimate relationship with birds that are often supporting or entangled with a body. Using intense and often contrasting colors and expressive line work they create a relatable visceral connection.

Alex Stark is a painter and curator and practices in Boulder, Colorado and Chicago, Illinois. He received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and presently works at SAIC as a Disability Advisor. Stark has recently shown work in Chicago, New York and Colorado.

Dozier Bell

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Dozier Bell is a Maine native who still lives and works in the state. She is the recipient of several awards, including an American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship as artist-in-residence at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany, two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants, and the Adolf and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant. Residencies include the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, and the MacDowell Colony, among others. She is represented by the Danese – Corey Gallery in New York City.

Amy Pleasant

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Artist’s Statement

My work explores the body and repetitive gesture. With a limited palette and an economy of line, I paint, draw and cut fragmented forms of the figure. I am documenting essential, universal motions and human behaviors, simplified and stripped down.

Amy Pleasant, www.amypleasant.com, received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art. Represented by Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, NY and whitespace gallery, Atlanta, GA, her work has been shown at venues such as Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, Atlanta Contemporary, Cuevas Tilleard Projects, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the U.S. Embassy, Prague, Czech Republic. Her work has been reviewed in Sculpture, The Brooklyn Rail, Art in America, and artforum.com, among others. Pleasant was named a recipient of the 2015 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Award.

Renee Robbins

Artist’s Statement

“Love Letter Etchings” stem from a deep obsession with the diversity of flora and fauna in the ocean. I see these pieces as analogous to love letters to my heroes or unknown celebrities. In contrast to some of my other work, which abstracts and imagines natural phenomena in densely layered painting compositions, the specimens in these compositions are based on actual creatures. My process involves lots of research about the creatures in order to learn more about them, consider their habitat, and respond to their unique characteristics within the love letter.

Renee Robbins is a Chicago-based visual artist who focuses on depicting micro to macro relationships. She is represented by Lois Lambert Gallery in Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, CA. Her public art commission in downtown Chicago, “X Marks the Milky Way,” is featured in the Wabash Arts Corridor. She has exhibited widely, including at the Fermilab, America’s premier particle physics laboratory, Alden B Dow Museum of Science and Art, Firecat Projects, Adventureland Gallery, Packer Schopf Gallery, and the Hyde Park Art Center. The Chicago Gallery News featured Robbins as a ‘Young Chicago Artist’ to watch.

Keren Kroul

Artist Statement

I mine memories for fragments of belonging and desire, moments of personal identity waiting at the edges of things: patches of summer sunlight on my grandmother’s bedroom floor, streaks of deep indigo in the sea at dusk, the rough texture of an old carpet under my feet. These ephemera are repeated and layered, twisted and tangled, becoming dense formations, map-like places of memory and identity.

Drawing is at the heart of my work. With watercolor on paper, I use tiny brushes to mark the passage of time in a meticulous, repetitive, and meditative process. Lines become shapes, then patterns, and then structures, hovering over the silence of the paper. I am drawn to the immediacy of watercolor, and to the reflection of the hand in the work: irregular and imperfect and of the moment. The play between micro and macro, the fragility of the single line against the physicality of the overall piece, and the fluid interconnectedness of memory, time, and place, drives the work.

Keren Kroul was born in Haifa, Israel, to an Argentinean father and Israeli mother, and grew up in Mexico City and Costa Rica. She currently resides in Minnesota. She holds an MFA in painting from Parsons School of Design (NY) and a BA in fine arts from Brandeis University (MA). Her work was featured in the 2014 Minnesota Biennial at the Minnesota Museum of American Art (MN), and has been exhibited regionally and nationally. Kroul is a recipient of a 2015 Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board.