ETIENNE ZACK “MIND PICTURES”
“Mind Pictures” is a series of new paintings that merge painting, text, language and photo transfers. This work serves as a material response intended at understanding perception amidst a barrage of images.
Etienne Zack
“Mind Pictures” Gallery Installation View
ETIENNE ZACK “MIND PICTURES”
April 11 - May 25, 2024
Introduction by Travis Diehl
Etienne Zack, April 2024
Etienne
Zack reasons through the world with paint. A previous series, exploring big data, surveillance, and social knowledge, featured catacombs and panopticons of bound documents. Some of these forms echo in his newest scenes, depicting hurriedly abandoned domestic spaces, kitchen-officeliving rooms, laced with an alphabet soup of letters: Zack’s notes for each respective painting. These buried phrases resist interpretation, yet also code for the paintings you see—the obscene back end of the image spilling onto the surface.
These interiors could be psychic spaces, while the pair of cityscapes suggest the infinity of exterior space, the world, the crush of imagery and other minds. Out there, too, recall is imperfect—the scale is skewed. Zack describes these mnemonic spaces (one of which mirrors the other, but painted freehand,imprecisely) as cubist, in the sense of seeing a place from multiple points at once. Zack once went so deep into text-to-image software that he found it impossible to recall visual memories. His mind’s walls, so to speak, were blank and dark. The digital doles out an impossible stew of vantages. You’re not sure which of these perspectives is genuinely yours, and which have been culturally implanted. To navigate our common, wired world, Zack’s paintings suggest, you must abandon the need to know the difference.
-Travis Diehl, New York City, April 2024
Etienne Zack with “XO” & “X”
The map-like landscapes convey a world perceived en masse—a coded experience, a terrain not necessarily made for human perception. The images found online are assembled together as a journey. Although the pictures are edited to aid my own recall of places I have visited, they remain boundless. As if gazing back from a futuristic perspective, these paintings often convey the sensation of viewing our environments through an old-world lens. The acrylic and oil paintings are often mirror images, loosely translated from the image transfer works. They are works of translation and an ode to painting.
Etienne ZackX
Image Transfers & Oil on Canvas 2023
68 x 58 in.
Acrylic,
Details of “X”, Acrylic, Image Transfers & Oil on Canvas, 2023, 68 x 58 in.
68 x 58 in.
XO Acrylic & Oil on Canvas 2024
of “XO”, Acrylic & Oil on Canvas, 2024, 68 x 58 in.
DetailsEmbedded Field
Acrylic, Image Transfers & Oil on Canvas 2023
24 x 29 1/2 in.
L to R: “Symbiosis”, “Vacancy”, “Impression I”
The paintings of interior scenes are akin to a mind landscape, almost as if glimpsing into someone’s mind. The painted text on the surface stems from personal notes and research. The narratives are internal dialogues on the interface between technological systems, the language of painting and myself thinking through them. The text is applied directly onto the painted surface using stencils. As the stencil is reused, paint begins to obliterate the previous characters. This material process simultaneously reveals and conceals my recorded thoughts. As each layer accumulates, the narrative becomes garbled, confetti-like.
Etienne Zack2024
40 x 52 in.
Symbiosis Acrylic & Oil on Canvas
Details of “Symbiosis”, Acrylic & Oil on Canvas, 2024, 40 x 52 in.
Acrylic, Image Transfers & Oil on Canvas 2023
40 x 52 in.
Vacancy
Details of “Vacancy”, Acrylic, Image Transfers & Oil on Canvas, 2023, 40 x 52 in.
Acrylic, Image Transfers & Oil on Canvas 2023
32 x 24 in.
Mirror
Details of “Mirror”, Acrylic, Image Transfers & Oil on Canvas, 2023, 32 x 24 in.
Impression I
Acrylic & Oil on Canvas 2024 36 x 30 in.
Solarization
42 x 48 in.
Acrylic & Oil on Canvas2024
Details of “Solarization”, Acrylic & Oil on Canvas, 2024, 42 x 48 in.
L to R: “Solarization”, “XO”, “X”
These paintings contemplate the remarkable endurance of the language of painting in synthesizing, translating and thinking through diverse realities.
Painting here functions as a form of writing and reading technology intricately reflecting the depths of the human mind and its psychology.
Etienne Zack
Impression, Acrylic & Image Transfers on Arches Paper, 2024, 30 x 22 in.
Liquified, Acrylic & Image Transfers on Arches Paper, 2024, 30 x 22 in.
Floaters
Acrylic & Image Transfers on Arches Paper 2024
22 x 30 in.
Born in Montréal, Canada (1976), Etienne Zack moved to Vancouver, Canada in 1997. He was based in Los Angeles between 2010 and 2016, and now resides in Washington State, USA. Zack studied at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver (2000), Concordia University (1997) and College St-Laurent in Montreal (1996).
Etienne Zack’s paintings serve as code-like environments where paint, language, text, image, history, and architecture merge. He views painting as a dynamic writing and reading technology, challenging norms, and prompting introspection of our perceptual experiences.
Zack’s paintings can be seen through the lens of the painting medium itself, while references to history, literature and architecture are also common terrain. His recent works explore digital spaces, data gathering, and cloud technology’s impact on our memory and concepts of reality.
Noteworthy solo exhibitions include – Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Bergen Kunsthall, Norway; Thomas Dane Gallery, England; Surrey Art Gallery, Canada; Esker Foundation, Canada and Blackwood Gallery University of Toronto, Canada.
His work has been included in numerous exhibitions at Asia Art Center – Taiwan, Hefei Contemporary Museum, Hefei – China, Mass MoCA,- USA, National Gallery of Canada –Canada, Montréal Museum of Art – Canada, The Model Museum – Ireland, Vancouver Art Gallery – Canada, Norwich Gallery – England amongst others.
Zack’s paintings are collected by institutions and museums including the National Gallery of Canada (five works), Art Bank of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery (three works), Montreal Fine Arts Museum, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (two works), National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec, Surrey Art Gallery, Glenbow Museum, City of Montréal, Zabludowicz Collection (London, England) and The Model Museum (Sligo, Ireland) to name a few.
His work can also be found in numerous corporate and private collections in the United States, Europe, Scandinavia, Hong Kong, Beijing, Ireland, England and across Canada.
Etienne Zack with “XO”
ETIENNE ZACK “MIND PICTURES”
Online catalogue of an exhibition held at Michael Gibson Gallery April 11 - May 25, 2024
The gallery would like to thank Travis Diehl for his insightful introduction.
Travis Diehl is a writer and critic based in New York City. He is a recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and the Rabkin Prize in Visual Arts Journalism. Online Editor at X-TRA Contemporary Art Journal, Diehl’s reviews and essays have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
For Etienne Zack’s complete Curriculum Vitae and images of available paintings please visit www.gibsongallery.com
Front Cover Image: detail of “XO”, Acrylic & Oil on Canvas, 2024, 68 x 58 in.
Back Cover Image: detail of “Solarization”, Acrylic & Oil on Canvas, 2024, 42 x 48 in.
Design Michael Gibson Gallery
Artwork Images © Etienne Zack
www.gibsongallery.com