Raymond Zarnowitz
Ether
May 25–July 7, 2024
Artist discussion
Saturday, June 29, 12 PM
Ether is often, colloquially, thought of as a certain intangible, amorphous quality; something that we understand is without quite knowing what it is. In his first exhibition with Turley Gallery, Raymond Zarnowitz presents a series of paintings with a wide vocabulary of mark making, and absurdist, though generalized subjects. While this body of work has a tangible presence on this plane, each piece seems to come from a world all its own.
Raymond Zarnowitz, The Mixologist, 2023, oil on medical plastic and linen, 10.25 x 8.25 x 1.5 inches
Raymond Zarnowitz
Coming out of drawing there has always been an interest for me in the depiction of the specific to the general in painting, where the simplification of forms cooks down multiple drawings or ideas towards a single sensation, so that the paintings transcribe a feeling without directly conveying their content. Working over the past fourteen years has led to a way of using paint, building patches of color, scraping away to reveal structures, with lines coming towards the end to carve forms, which hopefully has some meaning in and of itself. Rarely a painting might resolve in a single day, more often they come together over months or years until they look as if things happened all at once, or are just beginning.
Raymond Zarnowitz, Slug Test, 2023, oil on linen, 18 x 15 x 1.5 inches
Raymond Zarnowitz (b. 1990, New York, NY) was raised in San Jose, California. He graduated from The University of California Davis after studying painting under artists Wayne Thiebaud and Mike Henderson. He received the Freemon Gadberry award to study at the New York Studio School in 2012, and has lived and worked in Brooklyn, NY, ever since. He has shown in a variety of group exhibitions, as well as solo exhibitions Meaning and Difference at 373 Broadway (New York, NY), and Black and White Paintings at Starr Suites (Brooklyn, NY).
Installation photography by Spencer House Studio