Jerry Zeniuk recent paintings
at Lawrence Markey
San Antonio, TX
April 30 – June 7, 2019
Opening reception: Tuesday, April 30, 5–7 pm
Lawrence Markey is pleased to present an exhibition of recent paintings by artist Jerry Zeniuk. This will mark the sixth solo presentation of Jerry Zeniuk’s work at the gallery, an ongoing collaboration since 1991.
The roughly square format, oil on linen paintings selected for this exhibition were created in 2017 and 2018. Zeniuk’s work explores the possibilities of painting within given boundaries, “painting as the continual balancing of possibilities and their consequences” (Jörg Dour, On the Art of Jerry Zeniuk, 2014). Circular swaths of modulating hues are the visual identifiers in these works; monochrome or multi-layered, dense or dissipating at the edges, fully formed on the surface or at greater tension with a murky ground. Color, but more importantly, the spaces between forms, anchor the pictorial strategy of Zeniuk’s recent work. Zeniuk’s compositions are derived entirely from a sense of painterly intuition, refraining from use of prior sketches or planning. Sentimentality and optical illusion are not at play in Zeniuk’s methodology. As Zeniuk states in the following excerpt from the publication Jerry Zeniuk Paintings: Not For Your Living Room, Museum Wiesbaden, 2014:
“...how the materials work together is important. The texture of the canvas determines to a large extent the color surfaces, their density, their luster, etc...The first color need not be justified, but the second color must have a reason, and it is of course an answer to the first color. The two colors, together, then create an image that decides what kind of pictoral space they create in contrast to the surface.” -Jerry Zeniuk in an interview with Evelyn Bergner
Jerry Zeniuk was born in 1945 in Bardowick, Germany. He emigrated with his family to the United States in 1950. Zeniuk earned his Masters of Fine Arts at the University of Boulder, CO in 1969, moving to New York that same year. Zeniuk began exhibiting in the early 1970s in New York and Europe, notably included in the exhibition Fundamental Painting at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 1975. From 1992 to 2010 Zeniuk was a Professor of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. Zeniuk has steadily exhibited in Europe and the United States, including at the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland the Hirshhorn in Washington, DC, and Museum Wiesbaden, Germany. Jerry Zeniuk lives and works in Munich.
Jerry Zeniuk’s latest publication is How to Paint published by the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop & Sieveking Verlag.
The gallery is located at Pearl, 200 E. Grayson St., No.104, in the Full Goods building breezeway running along E. Grayson.
Please contact Sandra Weatherhead to request further information or images: 210-228-9966 or
info@lawrencemarkey.com