john zurier – oblaka

21 March - 4 May 2003

John Zurier's continuing series of abstract paintings Oblaka are painted on handmade canvases imported from Russia. Zurier encourages their imperfect objecthood, enhancing the varying roughness and inconsistencies with architectonic applications of paint. Not so much a field as a scrubland of colour, each painting contributes to a vocabulary of brushstrokes - from multi-layered to spectrally thin. Each surface maps the history of its own making, at times reworking earlier versions almost to the point of obliteration..

Oblaka means cloud in Russian, but Zurier's interest is in the palpable weight of the word rather than the imagery it suggests. The pre-stretched canvases are proportioned for the ideal domestic landscape or portrait, so that their intimate size and predetermined sculptural presence provides the ground for Zurier's exploration of the physical qualities of paint.

John Zurier lives and works in Berkeley, California and is represented by Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco. Precent exhibitions include: Painted Color Chac Mool Gallery, Los Angeles, California, 2003; John Zurier, Robert Ryman, Joseph Marioni: Paintin Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philidelphia, Pennsylvania, 2002; Whitney Biennial 2002 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York, 2002. Upcoming: Exodus: Between Promise and Fulfillment Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, Summer 2003.

A fully illustrated catalogue published by Gallery Paule Anglim containing an interview with Lawrence Rinder is available.

Press
100 Reviews, Alberta Press