Bryan Zanisnik

Last updated
Museum of Americans in China, Site-Specific Installation and Performance, 2011 Museum of Americans in China.jpg
Museum of Americans in China, Site-Specific Installation and Performance, 2011
When I Was a Child I Caught a Fleeting Glimpse, Performance, 2009 Fleeting-glimpse-bryan-zanisnik.jpg
When I Was a Child I Caught a Fleeting Glimpse, Performance, 2009
To Hell and Back (Nothing), 40" x 30", C-Print, 2008 Back-nothing-bryan-zanisnik.jpg
To Hell and Back (Nothing), 40" x 30", C-Print, 2008

Bryan Zanisnik is a contemporary artist working in video, performance, photography, and installation. Zanisnik's multidisciplinary practice uses objects en masse to explore American culture, Freudian psychology, and familial relationships. His site-specific installations have addressed diverse subjects, including a crumbling library of Philip Roth novels, an entropic swamp littered with Northern New Jersey waste, and an Americana museum reconstructed in Guangzhou, China. Critic David Duncan commented that Zanisnik "comical impartation of dubious history and catalogue of trivial possessions sidestep sentimentality while conveying a fascination with the type of inherited narrative that gets passed down in close-knit families." [1]

Contents

In the spring of 2012 Zanisnik was involved in a legal battle with Philip Roth over the use of Roth's The Great American Novel in his performance at the Abrons Arts Center. According to Artnet magazine, "the law firm representing author Philip Roth personally served performance artist Bryan Zanisnik with a cease and desist letter at the Abrons Arts Center on New York's Lower East Side, where Zanisnik was in the midst of staging Every Inch a Man, a performance that involves locking himself inside a Plexiglass case while he silently reads Roth's The Great American Novel and a fan blows old baseball cards and money into the air around him." [2]

Since 2002 Zanisnik has photographed and written about the Meadowlands, a polluted swamp in northern New Jersey. Focused on the objects discarded within the landscape, Zanisnik was known to have had encounters with local police, environmental scientists, hobo encampments, and homeland security. Critic Christine Smallwood said Zanisnik's "photo essay in Triple Canopy 'Beyond Passaic' documents the author's illegal wanderings in New Jersey's heavily polluted and largely neglected Meadowlands. Inspired by Robert Smithson, himself famously inspired by the region, Zanisnik walks abandoned train tracks, finds discarded objects, and discovers a hobo encampment under a bridge. While Smithson was drawn to 'geology and rock quarries, monumental vacancies and ruins in reverse', Zanisnik is interested in the legal ambiguity of the space, its toxicity, and the people living on its waste." [3]

Personal life and education

Zanisnik was born in Union, New Jersey in 1979. He received a B.A. from Drew University and an M.F.A. from Hunter College. He has completed residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program, the Smack Mellon Artist Studio Program, the MacDowell Colony, the Art Omi International Artists Residency, and the Guangdong Times Museum in Guangzhou, China.

He is married to Anna Kaschel, formerly a fashion designer at H&M. She is German; they met at a New Year's Eve party in Brooklyn in 2014. [4]

Exhibitions

He has exhibited and performed in New York at MoMA PS1, SculptureCenter and the Queens Museum of Art; [4] in Philadelphia at the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Fabric Workshop and Museum; in Miami at the De La Cruz Collection; in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Photography; in Los Angeles at LAXART; and internationally at the Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Vienna and the Futura Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague. Zanisnik’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times , Art in America, Artforum, and ARTnews, amongst others. He is included in Art:21's documentary series New York Close Up and is a contributing writer at Triple Canopy.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Smithson</span> 20th-century American artist

Robert Smithson was an American artist known for sculpture and land art who often used drawing and photography in relation to the spatial arts. His work has been internationally exhibited in galleries and museums and is held in public collections. He was one of the founders of the land art movement whose best known work is the Spiral Jetty (1970).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Jersey Meadowlands</span> Region of New Jersey, United States

New Jersey Meadowlands, also known as the Hackensack Meadowlands after the primary river flowing through it, is a general name for a large ecosystem of wetlands in northeastern New Jersey in the United States, a few miles to the west of New York City. During the 20th century, much of the Meadowlands area was urbanized, and it became known for being the site of large landfills and decades of environmental abuse. A variety of projects are underway to restore and conserve the remaining ecological resources in the Meadowlands.

<i>Artforum</i> Magazine on contemporary art

Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ × 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably, the Artforum logo is a bold and condensed iteration of the Akzidenz-Grotesk font, a feat for an American publication to have considering how challenging it was to obtain fonts favored by the Swiss school via local European foundries in the 1960s.

Carol Bove is an American artist based in New York City. She lives and works in Brooklyn.

Ester Partegàs is a Spanish contemporary artist and educator. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

The Bruce High Quality Foundation is an arts collective in Brooklyn, New York City, the United States, which was "created to foster an alternative to everything." The collective is made up of five to eight rotating and anonymous members, most or all of whom are Cooper Union graduates. The group has attracted attention with the subversive, humorous and erudite style of their work and operates an unaccredited art school, the Bruce High Quality Foundation University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jaimie Warren</span> American photographer and performance artist

Jaimie Warren is an American photographer and performance artist who is based in Brooklyn, New York. Warren is a fellow in Interdisciplinary Arts from the New York Foundation for the Arts, she is the recipient of the Baum Award for An Emerging American Photographer, and is a featured artist on the PBS Art:21 series “New York Close Up”.

Nicole Cherubini is an American visual artist and sculptor. She lives and works in New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kynaston McShine</span>

Kynaston McShine was a Trinidadian born curator and public speaker. His visions about contemporary art made lasting contributions to the lives of countless artists and colleagues at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City where he worked from 1959 to 2008. He is said to be the first curator of color at a major American museum and at his retirement he had risen to the position of chief curator at large of painting and sculpture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Paul Britto</span>

Michael Paul Britto is a New York contemporary artist who explores the consequences of racial inequality through photography, video, collage, sculpture and performance. Britto shines a light on important racial issues using contemporary art. His work has been exhibited predominantly in New York, but also internationally, with exhibitions in Spain, Poland, and England. In 2004, he won the Individual Artist grant from New York State Council of The Arts, and in 2005, he was awarded the Media Arts Fellowship Grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi</span> Nigerian artist

Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi is a Nigerian artist, art historian, and curator, currently curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He was raised in Enugu and studied under sculptor El Anatsui at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, before traveling as an artist and curator. In the United States, he completed his doctorate at Emory University in 2013 and became the curator of African art at Dartmouth College's Hood Museum of Art. In 2017, he moved to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Nzewi has curated the Nigerian Afrika Heritage Biennial three times, the Dak'Art biennial in 2014, and independent exhibitions at Atlanta's High Museum of Art and New York's Richard Taittinger Gallery. Nzewi also exhibited internationally as an artist and artist-in-resident.

Yumi Janairo Roth is a Colorado-based visual artist who is known for her sculptures and site-responsive projects that explore themes of hybridity, immigration, and displacement. Working in diverse media, Roth's practice elevates the mundane, honors international craft techniques, and empowers the interloper to navigate unfamiliar places. Roth is an associate professor of Sculpture and Post-Studio Practice at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Kiyan Williams is an American visual artist who works across a range of media, including sculpture, performance, and installation. By revisiting public sculpture and national symbols, Williams creates artworks that subvert dominant narratives of history, power, and American identity. Williams lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Doreen Garner is an American sculptor and performance artist. Her art practice explores where history, power, and violence meet on the body via beauty or medicine. Garner has exhibited at a number of venues, including New Museum, Abrons Arts Center, Pioneer Works, Socrates Sculpture Park, The National Museum of African American History in Washington, D.C., Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art in Brooklyn, and Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia. Garner holds a monthly podcast called #trashDAY with artist Kenya (Robinson). Garner lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baseera Khan</span> American artist

Baseera Khan is an American visual artist. They use a variety of mediums in their practice to "visualize patterns and repetitions of exile and kinship shaped by economic, social, and political changes in local and global environments, with special interests in decolonization processes".

Amy Yao is a musician, curator, and contemporary visual artist making work in many different mediums informed by ideas of waste, consumption, and identity. She is represented by 47 Canal in New York City. Yao is a lecturer in visual arts at Princeton University in New Jersey. Her sister Wendy Yao was proprietor of Ooga Booga art boutique and bookstore in Los Angeles.

Jes Fan is an artist born in Canada and raised in Hong Kong, currently based in Brooklyn, New York. Their work looks at the intersection of biology and identity, and explores otherness, kinship, queerness and diasporic politics. Fan has exhibited in the United States, UK, Hong Kong, and others.

Diane Simpson is an artist who lives and works in Wilmette, Illinois.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nyeema Morgan</span> American visual artist

Nyeema Morgan is an American interdisciplinary and conceptual artist. Working in drawing, sculpture and print media, her works focus on how meaning is constructed and communicated given complex socio-political systems. Born in Philadelphia, she earned her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art and her MFA from the California College of the Arts. She has held artist residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and Smack Mellon. Morgan's works are in the permanent collections of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and the Menil Collection.

WangShui (1986) is an American contemporary artist. They work across a range of media including film, installation art, painting, and sculpture. They are based in New York City.

References

  1. Duncan, "Bryan Zanisnik at Sunday L.E.S.", Art in America, January, 2010, p. 118 - 119
  2. Rachel Corbett, "Philip Roth Tells Artist to Stop the Show", Artnet magazine, April 3, 2012
  3. Christine Smallwood, "Return to the Meadowlands", Triple Canopy, February 2, 2012
  4. 1 2 "Vows: Anna Kaschel, Bryan Zanisnik". The New York Times. 17 March 2019.