John Zurier “North from Here”

Peter Blum Gallery

[Image: John Zurier "Illustrated: North from Here I" (2019) oil on linen, 78 x 48 in.]

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Peter Blum Gallery presents an exhibition of new paintings by John Zurier entitled, North from Here, at 176 Grand Street, New York.

The title of the exhibition, North from Here, is shared by a series of three large paintings. For Zurier, the north evokes stark austerity and desolation; it is inhospitable and hostile, yet terrifyingly beautiful nature.

Zurier’s paintings of atmospheric color fields examine qualities of evanescent light as well as solid radiance. Offering nuanced examples of the medium’s possibilities, Zurier pares down painting to the essentials with a sensory and allusive richness embedded in their asperity. The structural vocabularies and limited palette emphasize the beauty inherent in nature without reference to landscape. This subtle beauty is apparent in the subdued visual incidents of delicate inconsistencies in the executions of lines, marks, hues, and margins while demonstrating a deliberate emphasis on the wholeness of chromatic surface.

John Zurier was born in Santa Monica, CA in 1956, and lives in Berkeley, CA and Reykjavík, Iceland. He received his MFA in painting from the University of California, Berkeley (1984). Selected museum exhibitions include: UC Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA (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.