Con Artist Collective Gallery
“Swimmers/A Year in the Life”
New Work by Jane Zweibel
Where: Con Artist Collective Gallery, 119 Ludlow Street
When: December 9-11, 2016.
Hours; Friday 11-7, Saturday 11-7, Sunday 10:30-6:30
Opening Reception: Saturday, December 10, 7-10pm
Con Artist Collective Gallery is pleased to present a solo show of recent work by Jane Zweibel.
“A Year in the Life” consists of small mixed media works on canvas board. Collages created in a sketchbook that Ms. Zweibel kept over the past year inspire and inform each piece. The comprehensive sketchbook was created during a tumultuous, transitional, and transformative period in the artist’s life. Ms. Zweibel was in between studios, and the sketchbook served as a portable workspace for her. The media employed in the pieces include acrylic, gouache, watercolor, color pencil, felt, clay, glitter, markers, and oil pastel. The serious content is contrasted by the playful use of materials. The subject matter deals with emotional and psychological states. Each work depicts a self-portrait in different guises. One such guise is the image of a super heroine. The scenarios are magic realist and dream-like. In “A Year in the Life”, Ms. Zweibel also deals with opposites, such as vulnerability vs. strength, and struggle vs. redemption. The body of work as a whole can be seen as a non-linear narrative.
‘Swimmers” is a mixed media installation. It consists of large ink and tempera paintings on paper, and small soft sculptural elements painted with glitter. “Swimmers” is inspired by Ms. Zweibel’s experience of swimming, including and expressing all of the senses: breathing, touch, smell, etc. The large paintings depict small figures moving in and out of the abstracted swirling brushstrokes of the water. Some figures are moving in and out of the waves, some are submerged. The soft sculpture pieces are interspersed around the paintings. The images include: lips, eyes, starfish, mermaids, seahorses, flowers, fish, teardrops, hands, and feet. “Swimmers” is meant to be an experiential narrative piece. The installation is about the feeling states, and process of healing, that the act of swimming conjures for the artist, and the images are meant to be parts of a continuum and stream-of-consciousness. “Swimmers” is both fragmented and whole. In addition, these work references metaphors like birth and rebirth, and being lost and found.
