NYAB Event - Zoe Pettijohn Schade “Crowds”

Zoe Pettijohn Schade “Crowds”

Kai Matsumiya

[Image: Zoe Pettijohn Schade "Crowd of Crowds 3" (monkeys, candy-colored tombstones, feathers)]

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Kai Matsumiya presents Zoe Pettijohn Schade’s solo exhibition “Crowds” at the space and will represent its first pure painting presentation. The verb “crowd” overwhelms and preoccupies, and as a noun, it refers to a large number of things collectively. These works uncover the complex relationships among structural patterning and its disruptions.

The weaving of images that are loaded with associations (monkeys, cotton-candy colored tombstones, feathers, decapitated kings, etc.) creates a dense field of relationships and meanings that are conceptually/historically rich. The images and the structures that organize them explore both the aspirations and the pitfalls of order. Her work is extremely labor intensive, as a painting (16”x22”) requires nearly two months for completion, and is composed of layers of images each of which is invented and executed by hand.

For the past decade the artist has been researching the obscure tradition of French gouache pattern painting for textiles from the 18th and 19th centuries. This work led to a Fulbright Research Scholars Grant to Paris in 2013, during which she strove to absorb the wild visual invention and genre disrupting approach of these anonymous painters and trained her hand in their language of intricate mark making. As an acknowledgement to her inspiration from this tradition, the show will include nine paintings from the early 1800s, courtesy of the Design Library in Wappingers Falls, NY, the world’s largest collection of design patterns. The exhibition will also present her meticulous studies in the form of drawings.

Reflecting on her work, Pettijohn Schade writes: “I try to achieve maximal density of layers in my paintings, both as a reflection of our experience in an image saturated world, and as a model of the structure of the unconscious. The unconscious is a potent reference for me in that it is a space where images and associations accrete and exert a kind of furtive power, like an elemental force that colors meaning.”