Duane Zaloudek
dal 29/1/2015 al 7/3/2015
Segnalato da
29/1/2015
Duane Zaloudek
Robert Henry Contemporary (RHV Fine Art), New York
Nomad Songs is an exhibition of 3 new gesso and watercolor paintings and a series of 7 paper cowboy hats made in the 1980s.
Nomad Songs is an exhibition of 3 new gesso and watercolor paintings and a
series of 7 paper cowboy hats made in the 1980s by New York based artist Duane Zaloudek. Since the 1960s
Zaloudek’s interest in exploring the phenomenological aspects of vision through an investigation of form, light
and color has dominated his studio practice, except for a brief period when vision problems motivated him to
create cowboy hats made of watercolor paper.
After being exposed to the ideas of Georg von Békésy in his book Sensory Inhibition in the 1960s, Mr.
Zaloudek’s studio practice has evolved over the last 40+ years from his interest in the phenomenology of seeing.
His, “intention of making painting an exclusively physical-visual experience and moving more completely away
from formal problem-solving and toward a self-conscious awareness of the physicality of seeing” has occupied a
central position in his work since that time.
Zaloudek’s subtle, almost all white compositions require long periods of concentrated looking before each
composition reveals faint grey lines that imply space or architecture but are really an exercise in seeing. Using
white gesso and watercolor pencils, Zaloudek takes months to complete each painting. He begins each
composition with white gesso on linen layered and sanded to a smooth rock-like surface. Zaloudek then adds
faint grey watercolor lines, sometimes only one, other times more, intuitively placed on the canvas. These lines
are often so faint that in order to see them the viewer must wait for the painting to expose itself over time. For the
viewer, this intense encounter with carefully reduced stimuli is the vehicle that Zaloudek uses to intensify an
awareness of being and provides an opportunity for us to feel the process of seeing.
For the first time in the United States, Nomad Songs will feature a large grouping of paper cowboy hats that Mr.
Zaloudek made from 1980-83 during a brief period of vision problems that kept him from seeing his paintings to
the same level of detail and as up close to the surface as he was accustomed. Influenced by his performances
singing and playing guitar in a local country band, Zaloudek began making cowboy hats out of watercolor paper.
Once his eyes recovered and he went back to painting, Zaloudek kept making the hats for the next several
years. These hats offer a poetic counterpoint to the solemn emptiness of his paintings and afford us a glimpse
into the artist’s biography that his paintings do not.
Duane Zaloudek was born in a boxcar in 1931 in Texhoma, Texas. His early childhood was spent on his grand
parents farm near Enid, OK and at age 13 his family moved to Oregon. He studied at The Portland Museum
School of Art in Portland, OR and at the University of Washington, Seattle. His work has been exhibited in
Europe and the United States, including the Helmhaus, Zürich and The Swiss National Archives, Bern among
others. He received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mark Rothko Foundation, Art
Matters and the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Fellowship. He lives and maintains his studio in the East
Village of Manhattan.
Image: Duane Zaloudek, #15, 1982, Watercolor paper, 20“ x 19” x 8", ©2015 Robert Henry Contemporary
Press Contact:
Robert Walden, info@roberthenrycontemporary.com
Opening: Friday, January 30 from 6-9pm
Robert Henry Contemporary
56 Bogart Street
Thu - Sun 1pm to 6pm