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STUX GALLERY - ARTIST: Michael Zansky

63 views · Published 23 November 2013 · 6:39 · Indexed 29 September 2026

Channel: NYC GALLERY OPENINGS · 2013 · People & Blogs

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Michael Zansky
A Vacation on Mars with God: Selected works

Stux Gallery
530 W. 25th St. 
New York, NY 10001 

November 21st - December 21st, 2013
Opening:  November 21st 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Stux Gallery is pleased to present the first exhibition of selected works by 
Michael Zansky, "A Vacation on Mars with God". Working with a variety of 
different themes and concepts, Zansky's vast portfolio and diverse works 
occupy a brilliantly enticing dialogue about the nature of humanity.
Zansky's world features seemingly innocent, doll-like figures and other 
nondescript creatures, all immersed in settings that are simultaneously post-
apocalyptic and prehistoric. Academically trained as a painter and employed as 
the set designer for Law and Order, his paintings combine his mastery of the 
paint brush with his unique sensibility to manufacture engrossing mise-en-
scenes. His modestly measured canvases exhibit devotion to masters such as 
De Chirico, Francesco Goya and Van Eyck, and his unique brushstrokes make 
these depictions of a lively yet abysmal hell intensely luminous and tangible. 
Technology melts and nature is mechanized, and his images offer decidedly 
sublime, enticing narratives that invite and resist interpretation. Several 
paintings combine line drawings with text that does not serve as clarifying 
captions, but enhancers of their overall mysterious aura.

Themes from these condensed scenes are dramatically amplified in Zansky's 
monumental recent installation at Mana Contemporary, New Jersey, "Giants 
and Dwarfs", and fragments similar to material in this exhibition will be on view 
at Stux. At Mana, a soaring industrial space is entirely lined with hundreds of 
paintings on carved wooden panels in earthy, raw and ominous hues, all 
depicting events that together form an ambitious attempt at illustrating the 
entirety of history of both human culture and earth's evolution. His paintings 
combine painstakingly meticulous woodwork and controlled burns, and 
emulate sensibilities of the precise, stark woodblock prints of Dürer but without 
the comfort and clarity of paper. These thematically and stylistically consistent 
panels are assembled in a visually sensible manner but do not form a 
continuous narrative; instead, unsettling panels lurk side by side, creating an 
overwhelming atmosphere of buzzing, highly physical energy.

His remarkable fire drawings present a distilled, cleaner version of his paintings 
and carvings. From afar, these similarly cryptic, engaging scenes of darkened 
dreams seem as if they were drafted with a particularly well-inked pen; they are 
actually created by gliding an industrial torch over paper with tremendous 
control to create faint burn marks that outline a newly conceived world by 
breaking down paper into sheer dark carbon. Fire, one of the most ominous 
and destructive elements in this world, is here applied as a controlled and fully 
wielded tool, sweetly obeying Zansky's hand like another purchase from the art 
supply store. The flame's undefined outline conveniently leaves imprints framed 
by soft, glowing edges, revealing a gentle vulnerability and tenderness not 
commonly associated the predominant sponsor of hell.

Michael Zansky is a New York based artist. He studied at Boston University and 
pursued advanced studies at Hunter College, during which time he began work 
as a master set painter and production designer for film directors such as 
Terry Gilliam, Francis Ford Coppola, and Jonathan Demme. He is the recipient 
of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, and a Fullbright-Hayes Fellowship, among 
others, and has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. His works 
have been regularly reviewed by publications such as The New York Times, Art 
in America, and Artforum. His works are represented in the permanent 
collections of The Dallas Museum of Art, The Berkley Art Museum, CA, The 
Brooklyn Art Museum, The Los Angeles County Museum of Ar, The Neuberger 
Museum of Art, and The Whitney Museum of American Art, amongst others. 
This is his fifteenth solo show in New York and his first at Stux Gallery.

Music by:
Chill Carrier - A New Day

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