June 20 – July 1, 2023
Jackson Hole, Wyoming
Western Tales
The definite article introduces each new painting by Dennis Ziemienski: “The Catch,” “The Departure,” “The Kiss.” Such evocative titles frame specific scenes, narrated in immaculate detail. By his design, each snapshot captures a dichotomy of perception: profound in retrospect, the compositions feel casual in the moment.
Consider, for instance, a cowgirl riding up to greet her beau at the helm of a prop plane. The romantic scene — age-old thematically — simultaneously hints at the wild transition from cowpoke to pilot. Through these narrative compositions, Ziemienski channels his interest in periods of historical transition — an attunement he considers his “wheelhouse” as a painter. Over the decades, he has honed his eye for spotting juxtapositions from the 1920s through 1960s. Laced with nostalgia, his compositions feel simultaneously classic and interpretative.
While watching 1923 — the prequel to Yellowstone starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren — Ziemienski was struck by the temporal shift within the Western drama; how only a century ago, cowboys were riding free in tandem
with trailblazing new technology. “Yes, there were horses and cattle in 1920s Montana,” he says, “But there were also trains, planes and automobiles in those scenes.” Turning to his vast personal library of vintage reference books and texts, he found further fodder for such transitional markers: flipping through a book on early aviation, he marveled at a photograph of horses pulling an airplane to an airfield — an occurrence that likely felt like the new normal at the time, and yet, when considered a century on, seems almost anachronistic. Sometimes, the perfect vision of hindsight falls short of imagining the lived incongruities of the past. In this generative space, Ziemienski paints moments that bridge the leaps of the past with the innovations happening now. Faced with change, then as now, his intrepid characters triumph.
