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John Zurier (born 1956) is an American abstract painter, known for his minimal, near-monochrome paintings.[1] His work has shown across the United States as well as in Europe and Japan. He has worked in Reykjavik, Iceland and Berkeley, California. Zurier lives in Berkeley, California.
John Zurier, Héraðsdalur 3, 2014-15, Oil on linen, 22+1⁄16in ×24+13⁄16in (56.0cm ×63.0cm)
Zurier paints abstract, near-monochrome paintings whose colors range from muted tones to vibrant hues.[4][5] Zurier's abstract paintings are informed by abstract expressionism, Post-War French painting, and Japanese aesthetics. His main interest is in simplicity, surface modulation, and color, as those are tied to people's experience of time.[6] Zurier's reductive paintings show his dedication to color, the material fact of painting, and the history of painting. His soft-hued abstract paintings play at crossing the line into representation with the sensation of nature, the silence of luminous weather, and the human touch. Capturing qualities of light and weather effects,[7] Zurier employs a range of brushstrokes and surface treatments,[8] varying from revealing the texture of the canvas or obscuring it with layers of thick impasto.[4][9][10] Zurier's work has been described as transcending the gestural and material to evoke the emotional.[11][12] While minimal, Zurier's practice is not minimalist, but rather composed of quiet works that focus on the structure and possibilities of a brushstroke. “I think the Japanese painter Ike No Taiga [1723–1776] was right,” Zurier has said, “the most difficult thing to achieve in painting is creating a space where absolutely nothing has been painted.”[13][14]
2012 São Paulo Bienal, The Imminence of Poetics, (catalog), Luis Pérez-Oramas, Tobi Maier, André Severo, Isabela Villanueva, 2012
Repeat After Me - Poems by Bill Berkson, Watercolors by John Zurier, Published by Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco, CA, 2011
2010 California Biennial: Orange County Museum of Art, (catalog), Sarah C. Bancroft, 2010
To: Night (Contemporary Representations of the Night), (catalog), curated by Joachim Pissarro, Mara Hoberman, Julia Moreno, 2008
The 7th Gwangju Biennial: 2008 Annual Report, (catalog), curated by Okwui Enwezor, et al., 2008
John Zurier Night Paintings: 2007–2008, (catalog), Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA, 2008
Pope, Alexander, John Zurier: New Paintings, (catalog), Text from “The Essay on Man” San Francisco, CA: Gallery Paule Anglim, 2005
EXODUS: Between Promise and Fulfillment, (catalog), Essay by Anthony Downey, Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge: Cambridge, England, 2003
Rinder, Lawrence, et al. Whitney Biennial 2002, (catalog), New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2002
John Zurier Paintings 1997–1999, (catalog), Interview with Lawrence Rinder, San Francisco, CA: Gallery Paule Anglim, 2000
Practice and Process: New Painterly Abstraction in California, (catalog), Armory Center for the Arts and the Richmond Art Center, Pasadena and Richmond, CA, 1998
Abstraction Absolved: Ten Bay Area Painters, (catalog) Introduction by Keith Lachowicz, Oakland, CA: Mills College Art Gallery, 1996
Garner Tullis Workshop: Monotypes, (catalog) Introduction by Memory Holloway, Praz/Vully, Switzerland, Galerie Au Poisson Rouge, 1986
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