RHYS ZIEMBA: ENCHANTED BULLSHIT
SEPT 1 - OCT 8, 2022
OPENING RECEPTION: SEPT 1, 6 - 8P CLOSING RECEPTION: OCT 8, 4 - 6P PERFORMANCE BY DANA SAUL: OCT 8, 5P
FLOOR 2
“There were ghosts that returned to earth to hear his phrases, As he sat there reading, aloud, the great blue tabulae. They were those from the wilderness of stars that had expected more.”
- Wallace Stevens, Large Red Man Reading (1948)
Art Cake is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based artist Rhys Ziemba. On view, September 1 through October 8, 2022, will be a selection of the artist’s most recent paintings.
As part of his practice, Ziemba collects various objects, such as medical skeleton models, traffic cones, paint buckets, inflatable flamingos, or kettlebells, and assembles them in his basement studio. The basement serves as a stage for his paintings which in turn become documentation of the arranged eclectic elements. His works are carefully rendered with consideration to the objects and the space which surrounds them. Balancing between Ziemba’s close observation and saturated imagination, his paintings record time.
On view at Art Cake is a selection of intimately scaled oil paintings made by Ziemba. Many of the paintings illustrate urban environments or landscapes in Florida created from direct observation, en plein air, or photographs taken by the artist. Other paintings were developed from drawings the artist made during a recent trip to Crete, Greece. Each of the paintings, measuring eight by ten inches, illustrates scenes within nature and contains a prominent horizon line and vast depth of field to emphasize the nature of light as it travels through space. Like his earlier works, Ziemba introduces inconsequential ephemera that disrupt the harmonious landscape. For the artist, the addition of these elements, whether it is a suggestion of an emotional pair of eyes, a finger pointing, a piece of trash, or a referential object, is partly a graphical device meant to draw the viewer’s eye across the composition and partly a way to allow each element to reify itself in a way that is meant to surprise even the artist. In some paintings, such as Beach Hat (2022), however, the element is so prominent within the detailed landscape that it becomes the subject of the painting.
In a recent statement about the group of paintings presented, Ziemba highlights the main idea as, “the way in which we human beings have such difficulty in valuing *things* until we are physically separated from them. That is, how we find ourselves suspended between the physicality of the world and its representation in our minds, and how our ability to transcend our material surroundings at any moment can prevent us from experiencing the sensations resulting from those surroundings.”
Literature has always been part of the way Ziemba relates to the world. Like Wallace Stevens' poem, Large Red Man Reading (excerpt above), which deals with the relation between writer and reader, Ziemba’s paintings bring out the relation between artist and viewer. Blue takes on a metaphorical meaning in Stevens’ poetry and often it is the color that represents imagination.1 The motive for the metaphor for Stevens “is a desire to associate, and finally to identify, the human mind with what goes on outside it.”2 Similarly, Ziemba is interested in what is real and imagined within his landscape paintings featuring atmospheric skies paralleling large bodies of water. Ziemba explains, “nature is what happens whether we are looking or not.” He continues, “As we humans learn more about nature we discover more reason to question the traditional view of ourselves as definitionally outside of it.”
Listen to an interview with Rhys Ziemba by Brainard Carey, hosted by Yale University Radio.
1 George McFadden, “Probings for an Integration: Color Symbolism in Wallace Stevens.” Modern Philology 58, no. 3 (February 1961), p. 186. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/434993. Accessed 22 Aug. 2022.
2 Northrop, Frye, The Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory 1933–1963: Volume 21. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006, pp. 445–446. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctt1287vmv. Accessed 22 Aug. 2022.
“Nature is what happens whether we are looking or not.”
ABOUT RHYS ZIEMBA
Rhys Ziemba was born in Webster Springs, West Virginia and grew up in Pensacola, Florida. He is a painter and musician based in Brooklyn, New York.
Most recently, the artist’s paintings were featured in Rhys Ziemba: The Music Plays The Band, an online solo exhibition presented by James Fuentes, New York. Ziemba’s work has been included in group exhibitions, including People Who Work There at cfcp, Brooklyn and People Who Work Here at David Zwirner, New York.
Images:
Rhys Ziemba I was wrong, 2022 Oil on panel 8 x 10 inches
Rhys Ziemba Pissed off Gosh, 2022 Oil on panel 8 x 10 inches
FOR PRESS INQUIRIES, PLEASE CONTACT:
marina@artcake.org