STEPHANIE MANZI

As an artist working amidst the unfolding environmental crisis, Stephanie Manzi asks, “What is the function of painting?” This existential question may seem overwhelming, but for Manzi it is an invitation to develop her own definitions of ecology and deepen her pictorial relationship to landscape. Play is an important method for her when engaging in these formal relationships. For Manzi, play involves a level of care and engagement; it is an open-ended process of improvisation, attention, listening, and reorganizing. She is inspired by the artist Hans Hofmann, who translated his experiences of being in nature into the forms and colors of his abstract paintings. She has also incorporated the philosophies of eco-theorist Timothy Morton, who calls for new language to understand nature in non-anthropocentric terms that can help redefine human relationships with the non-human world by highlighting their interdependence.

Although deeply reverential to the non-human world, Manzi’s landscape-based abstractions do not necessarily render what humans may recognize as “natural” forms. In her paintings, biomorphic shapes of bold pigment stretch and curl across the support, on top of which she layers canvas strips of square color blocks, creating surface textures and optical interplays of depth. Manzi recycles and resuscitates canvas strips from other works, deepening the interrelations within her oeuvre. She frequently makes paintings in pairs and while the canvases engage in physical conversation with one another, they also enter into spatial conversation with the viewer. Like Manzi’s other experiments in materiality, ranging from handmade paper collages, hand-tufted tapestries, and three-dimensional weavings of found or discarded material, these works imprint onto the space of the viewer, suggesting haptic marks through their textural and sculptural qualities as they open themselves up to further consideration.

This viewing experience proposes tactility and intimacy despite the formality of the gallery setting; it is also a reminder that the surrounding space is not separate from this momentary relationship, but rather symbiotically connected. In this way, Manzi’s works assert a function in this epoch of profound environmental loss: they encourage awareness beyond the immediate self from the micro to the macro scale, echoing the deep interdependence that Morton stresses. Everything truly is interconnected, and this is what gives us hope