Office Baroque is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of John Zurier in Brussels at our midtown gallery on Ravensteinstraat 44 Rue Ravenstein.
Zurier paints abstract, seemingly monochrome canvases with colours that range from muted earth tones to vibrant hues. Interested in capturing the various effects of his environment and translating that into paint, Zurier utilizes a range of materials, brushwork, and surface treatments to create a subtle balance between color modulation and spatial depth. The choices Zurier makes regarding the physical materials of his paintings – canvas or linen for the support, oil or distemper – are influenced by traditional Japanese aesthetics as well as modern painters such as Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch and Franz Kline. The paintings and watercolors that make up this exhibition have been made in the past year and are directly related to the time Zurier has spent in Iceland. In recent years, Iceland has been a primary source of inspiration for Zurier as the country allows him to access feelings that relate to simplicity, leanness, barrenness, weather, cold and variable light; all aspects Zurier is looking for in a painting. The lyrical qualities of his work often lie within their tendencies to be reductive and calm, but also in their density and thus inherent depth. “John Zurier,” wrote David Ebony, “walks a tightrope that stretches between everything and nothing.”
Born in Santa Monica, USA in 1956, John Zurier currently lives and works in Berkeley. His work has been the subject of a solo survey at the Berkeley Museum of Art and solo exhibitions at Nordenhake, Berlin; Peter Blum, New York and Anglim Gilbert, San Francisco. His work has appeared in group exhibitions at 30th Sao Paulo Biennial, Sao Paulo; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach; the 7th Gwangju Biennial, South Korea and the 2002 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. His work is included in the collections of the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville. He is the recipient of the John Guggenheim Fellowship (2010). He is currently included in a three-person exhibition at the New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe.
