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until 28.05. | #3410ARTatBerlin | Galerie Nordenhake Berlin presents from 29. April 2022 the exhibition “Level Distance” by the artist John Zurier.
John Zurier’s paintings often evoke a strong atmospheric character, suggesting phenomena from the natural world – the memory of a particular quality of light and colour from a specific location and moment. The paintings interplay between depth and surface, the ephemeral and the concrete, the signified and the signifier.
John Zurier, Untitled (Hare’s Fur), 2022, oil on linen, 65 x 38 cm, 25 5/8 x 15 in,
Photo: Nina Zurier, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Nordenhake Berlin/Stockholm/Mexico City
Many supports have been treated with repeated washing and scraping, before the final stretching on the frame, creating an additional element of depth and texture. Some paintings are covered with light washes in subtle hues and tones imbuing them with an etherial resonance. Others reveal a vigorous brushwork in intense broken fields of pigment.
John Zurier, Level Distance, 2021, oil on linen, 83.8 x 96.5 cm, 33 x 38 in,
Photo: Nina Zurier, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Nordenhake Berlin/Stockholm/Mexico City
Zurier’s approach is characterised by a stripping down of both the physical painting itself – its objectness, but even more its content.
Studio view John Zurier, Berkeley, CA, March 2022, Photo: Nina Zurier, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Nordenhake Berlin/Stockholm/Mexico City
The title “Level Distance” is meant to suggest breadth, balance, tranquility, and expansion–all qualities that are important to my painting. It is a theoretical term from Guo Xi, the 11th century Northern Song Dynasty painter. In his text, “The Lofty Message of Forests and Streams,” Guo Xi puts forth three compositional formulas for achieving atmosphere and spaciousness in painting. They have been repeated, refined, reinvented and rebelled against in classical Chinese painting for centuries. In a painting at “level distance” the eye sweeps slowly toward a remote view. How this was done, whether unhindered or interrupted, could be an allusion to painting itself, levels of abstraction, the personality of the painter, or an implied comment on the political situation of the era.
For the past two years, I have been looking at traditional Chinese and Japanese painting and reflecting on poetry and nature’s inclusiveness, as in being true to one’s own nature, and the moods associated with the seasons and how the contemplation of them in painting evokes corresponding feelings.
I am also drawing on my experiences in California and Iceland seeing movement and stillness, closeness and distance, not as opposing forces but simultaneous in the present. The sound of the wind and the light and air of an empty room.
John Zurier
John Zurier, The Waves, 2020, glue-size tempera and oil on linen, 65 x 55 cm, 25 9/16 x 21, 10/16 in,
Photo: Nina Zurier, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Nordenhake Berlin/Stockholm/Mexico City
John Zurier was born in 1956 in Santa Monica, California and lives and works in Berkeley, California and Reykjavik, Iceland. Most recently, he participated in the “artist as curator” exhibition The Artist’s Eye: Tammy Rae Carland, David Huffman, Lava Thomas, John Zurier at UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film in Berkeley, California (2022). A solo exhibition of recent paintings, “Far Again,” was presented at Moderna Museet Malmö in 2021. Selected museum exhibitions include UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (2018 and 2014); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2017); New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM (2016); Colby Museum of Art, Waterville, ME (2015). He has also exhibited at the 30th São Paulo Biennial, Brazil (2012); California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art, CA (2010); 7th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2008); Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, England (2003); and the Whitney Biennial, NY (2002). In 2010 he was awarded the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. His work can be found in numerous public collections including the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Museum of Fine Arts Houston; and others. A catalogue surveying his work from 1981 to 2014 with an essay by Robert Storr was published in 2015.
Studio view John Zurier, Berkeley, CA, March 2022, Photo: Nina Zurier, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Nordenhake Berlin/Stockholm/Mexico City
Opening: Friday, 29. April 2022, 11:00 am to 6:00 pm
Exhibition dates: Friday, 29. April – Saturday, 28. May 2022
Special opening for the Gallery Weekend Berlin: Friday, 29. April to Sunday, 1. May 2022
To the Gallery
Image caption title: John Zurier, Drop, 2022, glue-size tempera on linen, 60 x 65 cm, 23 5/8 x 25 5/8 in, Photo: Nina Zurier, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Nordenhake Berlin/Stockholm/Mexico City
Exhibition John Zurier – Galerie Nordenhake Berlin | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
