NYAB Event - Zach Harris "Central Park in a No Vex Cave"

Zach Harris "Central Park in a No Vex Cave"

Zach Feuer Gallery

This event has ended.

Zach Feuer Gallery presents an exhibition of new work by Zach Harris comprised of illusionistic paintings surrounded by intricately carved and painted wood reliefs.

Harris' artwork defies categorization, challenges cultural hierarchies of viewing and cannot be easily identified with any particular era or style. Through his inventive use of a variety of techniques, materials and creative strategies, he has developed a rich visual language, which strives to synthesize the history of painting and object making in a highly personal and non-linear manner. Harris's work is both illusionistic painting and object, abstract and formal, dense with conceptual and narrative underpinnings, and carries with it an ethos of sensitive refinement and DIY working methods.

In his latest body of work, Harris continues to experiment with new configurations that explore aesthetic issues such as periphery, illusion, scale, mathematics and color theory. Forms and images within the paintings are structured to create numerous configurations and representations. This strategy allows the image to be read in a myriad of ways, creating layered narratives and paradoxical forms that reflect a hallucinatory confluence of meaning and signifiers. Harris values the act of painting for its exploratory and responsive quality, using it to render visionary worlds that function as counterpoint to the actual relief carving that surrounds them.

The concept and design of Harris's overall artwork involves preliminary drawings and written notes, which attempt to orchestrate the 2-D, 3-D, and 4-D aspects of each piece. The result is a carefully constructed wood support which contains and intensifies the viewing experience. The peripheral frame, which has been historically under acknowledged, is not a marginal element in Harris' work, but has been designed in such a way as to heighten and contradict the traditional object of focus: the painting. Such a strategy both acknowledges and subverts preconceptions ingrained within our culture of viewing.

Zach Harris (b. 1976, Santa Rosa, CA) received his BA from Bard College, his MFA from Hunter College and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. His work was featured in Made in L.A. 2012 at the Hammer Museum. This is his first exhibition at Zach Feuer Gallery.