Event
John Zurier / MATRIX 255Post an Event »
UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA)
September 12 - December 21, 2014Info
- http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu
- (510) 642-0808
Berkeley-based artist John Zurier (b. 1956) paints abstract, luminous canvases with hand-mixed pigments that range from subtle, muted earth tones to vibrant, saturated hues. He uses a wide range of brushwork and surface treatments to draw attention to the varied textures of the canvas—often applying distemper (a tempera paint made with dry pigments in animal glue) in thin brushy layers—to capture qualities of light and the changing effects of the atmosphere. He builds compositions that are both simple and involved, paying close attention to all aspects of a painting’s construction, including the differences between cotton and linen surfaces, the weave of each canvas, and the individual properties of tempera versus oil paint. Informed by a wide range of references—Abstract Expressionism, Italian Renaissance painting, Minimalism, Japanese painting, and poetry—Zurier’s work transcends the mundane to enter an af fective realm. “I’m very interested in how compositional formats and motifs and even incidents in a painting can trigger perceptual responses and associations,” Zurier says.