A Conversation and Book Launch: Duane Zaloudek: Early Works

Join Brett Littman, Executive Director of The Drawing Center, with artist Duane Zaloudek to celebrateDuane Zaloudek: Early Works published by Gli Ori, Pistoia (IT).

The American artist Duane Zaloudek (b. Texahoma, 1931, lives and works in New York) began a series of collaborations with Monitor curated by Paola Capata and Brett Littman, Executive Director of The Drawing Center in New York. The debut exhibition in January 2015 was at Monitor Studio, New York featuring five paintings produced between 1966 and 1967 and two rare oil on paper works from 1963. The second solo exhibition was at Monitor Rome in March 2015 and highlighted Zaloudek’s paintings realized between the late 1950’s and early 1970’s, which include his Trask series (1961-1964), Milarepa series (1965-67) and first white-on-white canvases (1968-71).

Zaloudek describes his process as follows ,“I have been concerned with ideas relating to sensory inhibition and the implications such ideas hold for the technology of painting and the spectator – object relationship. A group of works have evolved from this concern to make painting an exclusively physical-visual experience in line with studies on the possibilities of visual actions and actions with extremely low contrasts. The objective has been to move more completely away from formal problem solving and to delve more deeply into the self – conscious awareness of the physicality of seeing. Progressively reducing the value and color contrast my goal has become an intensifying of an awareness of being on the part of the viewer, through an intense encounter with carefully reduced stimuli.”