Contemporary Carolina Abstraction I

New Paintings

The Other Side, 2011, acrylic on canvas
36 x 24 in., $864

Deli, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 in., $720/SOLD

Mall, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 in.,
$720/SOLD

Organic Space, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 in., $720

Memories, 2011, acrylic on canvas
30 x 24 in., $720/SOLD

Exis, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 in., $720

Bang, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 in., $720/SOLD

DON ZURLO: The New York Exhibition, November 12 – December 4, 2010

DON ZURLO: The New York Exhibition
November 12 – December 4, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, November 12, 5 – 9 pm
@ if ART Gallery, 1223 Lincoln St., Columbia, SC, (803) 238-2351.

An Organized System, 2010, acrylic on canvas,
30 x 40 in., $1,200

And Odd Incident, 2010, acrylic on canvas,
36 x 48 in., $1,730

For MORE IMAGES of paintings in the exhibition, CLICK HERE.

At age 76, Lexington, S.C., artist Don Zurlo in September had his first solo exhibition in New York City. A selection from that exhibition at Viridian Artists gallery will be in Don Zurlo: The New York Exhibition at Columbia’s if ART Gallery, which represents Zurlo. 

            The intricacy, surface quality, use of color and complexity of composition in Zurlo’s work has varied considerably over the years, but most of his paintings have been rooted in the traditions of Abstract Expressionism, Color Field Painting and Minimalism. His current paintings gravitate toward Color Field and a kind of organic Minimalism. In them, Zurlo has overlaid thinly painted fields of colors, from wide expanses to mere slivers, or has them bud up against one another.  The thin layers of paint and mixing of colors where two fields overlap result in the brighter works in a seductive luminosity, and in the darker ones, a transparent darkness. The fields’ edges are at the same time ragged, fluid and linear, creating forms that are at once amorphous and geometric and resemble torn paper. As such, the work relates to Zurlo’s student work in a late-1950s class under Allan Kaprow at Rutgers University, where he produced black-and-white torn-paper collages.

            “In many ways, form is an illusion,” Zurlo says, “our interpretation of an infinite variety of relationships between fields of energy.  In our search for meaning, our minds create images from these forces, filling in voids in our perception from the vast library of our personal impressions and experiences. We live in a world of illusions, attempting to assure ourselves we have a reasonable understanding of reality.  By trying to create a balance between accidental events, conscious design and intuitive decisions, I strive to create visual metaphors for a transcendent existence, the dim reflection of an alternate reality.”

            Aside from his undergraduate studies at Rutgers, Zurlo received an MFA from the university’s Douglass College. He has taught art at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg and Allen University in Columbia. Zurlo has exhibited at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, the Newark Museum of Art in Newark, NJ, Trenton’s New Jersey State Museum, the Flint Institute of Art in Flint, MI, the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina and the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, the Howard Wise Gallery in New York City and elsewhere.

DON ZURLO (American, b. 1934)

Don Zurlo (b. 1934), a resident of Lexington, S.C., is a mostly non-objective painter whose work touches on Color Field painting, a controlled form of Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism.

Among the venues where Zurlo has exhibited since the 1960s are the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN; the Newark Museum of Art in Newark, NJ; the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton, NJ; the Flint Institute of Art in Flint, MI; the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC; Viridian Artists and the Howard Wise Gallery, both in New York City; Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, FL; South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, SC; and if ART Gallery in Columbia, SC. Among Zurlo’s solo exhibitions are those at Columbia College in Columbia, SC; Douglass College in New Brunswick, NJ; Virginia Union University in Richmond, VA; and Gallery 80808/Vista Studios in Columbia, SC.

As an undergraduate student at Rutgers University in New Jersey, Zurlo studied with Allan Kaprow; he also completed his MFA at Rutgers. Zurlo taught at South Carolina State University from 1973 to 1978, and at Allen University in Columbia, SC, from 1989 to 1999.

To see paintings by Zurlo, CLICK HERE.

Zurlo's paintings are available from if ART Gallery, (803) 238-2351 / wroefs@sc.rr.com

DON ZURLO: Artist Statement

Opacity Is the Illusion of Nothing

(A Dopio Espresso)

I had an experience at Starbucks, looking out the window at a restaurant neon sign that malfunctioned, spelling out two different words, Liberty and Libe. One word was the restaurant ad about freedom, and the other was a nonsense syllable that seemed to contradict the first word. In my research, I found that libe is a C library that deals with data structures in computer programming. I wondered about the nature of free will. In trying to make sense of this event, I became aware of the capacity for chance happenings to expand our consciousness beyond the normal limits of our understanding. I incorporated the sign metaphor into esthetic principles I had worked with before, and used chance events to determine elements of form and color in the new paintings on which I was then working.

Accidents in our work allow us to consider elements outside the limits of our personal experiences. The artist has an opportunity to examine these events and incorporate new components into a composition, hopefully expanding the artist's and the spectator's vision of the world. In some ways, this relates to early 20th century principles of Dadaism, as well as mid-20th century performance art like the Happenings of Allan Kaprow and other artists.

Before Starbucks, I had been experimenting with visual metaphors for the human condition, often expressed using ambiguous space and form, as well as imagery obscured by overlapping layers of paint. After years of analyzing the uncertainties of our existence, I finally concluded that there are vast dimensions of reality beyond the realm of our understanding. This may include dimensions of reality other than the one in which we presently exist, realities we do not have the capacity to recognize or decipher, though we may have a spiritual sense of something significant infinitely greater than we are outside the reach of our rational minds.

I have attempted to express this transcendent nature of reality in a variety of ways using multiple dimensions of space, form, and color, including abstract images with ambiguous meaning. I noticed in earlier experiments that painting over something on a canvas does not remove it, but rather masks it, removing it only from conscious recognition. We see the surface image, but the underpainting changes the image in such a subtle way that our conscious mind does not see the underpainting. The invisible changes the visible. Elements of uncertainty in physical perception allow one's mind to interpret on a very subjective and imaginative level.

In painting, I use elements of random events in combination with intuitive and rational decisions, all in an attempt to expand our perception of the world and its infinite possibilities. I start with a concept, and then continue in the style of an abstract expressionist in making rapid decisions with paint on canvas. During the work, I change directions according to accidental events that have taken place on the canvas, sometimes painting over a canvas three or four times. At the end, I reevaluate my work and make conscious aesthetic adjustments in order to unify the composition into a coherent and integrated object. Still, there are dimensions in the work that I cannot fully understand. The sense of mystery remains.

In any work, there are uncertain elements - things we see but do not know we see. Opacity is the illusion of nothing. Through a combination of transparent, translucent, and opaque layers, I have attempted to present images that both reflect and transcend our physical existence. Even the bare canvas contributes one out of an infinite number of meanings that exist within a painting. The meaning of a work is different for each viewer, and it changes each time the viewer looks at the same painting.

One of my most frustrating experiences as an artist is trying to evaluate my own work. Each time I look at a painting, I respond to it in a different way. It is impossible to separate the painting and my perception of the painting, and my perception is constantly changing. When we look at something, we view it from the perspective of a living organism, not as though we were a camera. Our perceptions are personal, subjective, and subject to continual modifications, a function of whom we are as human beings of unfathomable depth and complexity living in a world of continual change.

The Starbucks experience began a long period of analysis of our thought processes - the subjective elements of perception as it relates to the nature of reality. Translating some of these concepts into visual metaphor, the image becomes a statement about the dematerialization of form. In this sense image becomes non-image. Form is an illusion - our interpretation of an infinite variety of relationships between fields of energy. Our minds create images from these forces, filling in voids in our perception from a vast library of personal impressions and experiences.

We live in a world of illusions, attempting to assure ourselves we have a reasonable understanding of reality. Occasionally we are humbled by the awareness that reality is not objective truth but a fiction of our imagination. In my own work, despite the use of Dada techniques, I attempt to find some degree of tranquility in the classical ideals of beauty. A sense of order is conveyed though the harmonious interaction of layers of mysterious shapes growing from inscrutable processes of creation. These are ephemeral images of the concrete, built upon tiers of multiple contradictions.

if ARTwalk: Salon I & II: December 11- 24, 2008

Don Zurlo

Yellow Sky, Blue Stream, 2007

Acrlyic on canvas, 24 x 30 in.

In: if ARTwalk: Salon I & II, Dec. 2008

For exhibition images with works by Don Zurlo, click here.

THE SALON I & II

Dec. 11 – 24, 2008

an exhibition at two Columbia, SC, locations:

Gallery 80808/Vista Studios

808 Lady Street

&

if ART Gallery

1223 Lincoln Street

Reception and ifART Walk: Thursday, Dec. 11, 5 – 10 p.m.

at and between both locations

For its December 2008 exhibition, if ART Gallery presents The Salon I & II, an exhibition at two Columbia, SC, locations: if ART Gallery and Gallery 80808/Vista Studios. On Thursday, December 11, 2008, 5 – 10 p.m., if ART will hold opening receptions at both locations. The ifART Walk will be on Lady and Lincoln Streets, between both locations, which are around the corner from each other.

The exhibitions will present art by if ART Gallery artists, installed salon-style at both Gallery 80808 and if ART. Artists in the exhibitions include two new additions to if ART Gallery, Columbia ceramic artist Renee Rouillier and the prominent African-American collage and mixed-media artist Sam Middleton, an 81-year-old expatriate who has lived in the Netherlands since the early 1960s.

Other artists in the exhibition include Karel Appel, Aaron Baldwin, Jeri Burdick, Carl Blair, Lynn Chadwick, Steven Chapp, Stephen Chesley, Corneille, Jeff Donovan, Jacques Doucet, Phil Garrett, Herbert Gentry, Tonya Gregg, Jerry Harris, Bill Jackson, Sjaak Korsten, Peter Lenzo, Sam Middleton, Eric Miller, Dorothy Netherland, Marcelo Novo, Matt Overend, Anna Redwine, Paul Reed, Edward Rice, Silvia Rudolf, Kees Salentijn, Laura Spong, Tom Stanley, Christine Tedesco, Brown Thornton, Leo Twiggs, Bram van Velde, Katie Walker, Mike Williams, David Yaghjian, Paul Yanko and DON ZURLO.

Works of Art: Don Zurlo

Flying Through Space, Put On The Brakes, 2011,
acrylic on canvas, 24 x 36 in., $875

Locked and Loaded, 2011, acrylic on canvas,
30 x 40 in., $1,200

Stop And Change Dogs, 2012, acrylic on canvas,
36 x 48 in., $1,750.

The Last Puerto Rico Orange Soda, 2012, acrylic on
canvas, 48 x 60 in., $2,900.

Who's Felix And Where Did He Go, 2011,
acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 in., $720

The Other Side, 2011, acrylic on canvas
36 x 24 in., $864

The Neon Sign, 2010, acrylic on canvas,
40 x 30 in., $1,200

The Relationship, 2010
acrylic on canvas
48 x 36 in., $1,750 

Nonsense Syllable, 2010, acrylic on canvas,
30 x 40 in., $1,200

An Organized System, 2010, acrylic on canvas,
30 x 40 in., $1,200

My Espresso, 2009

Acrylic on canvas

20 x 16 in., $400

Across The Street, 2010, acrylic on canvas,
30 x 40 in., $1,200

Uccello, 2009

Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 in., $ 1,200

Untitled, 2007

Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 in., $ 2,880

Yesterday, 2007

Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 in.

$ 1,200

NM 319108, 2008

Acrylic on canvas

24 x 36 in., $864

An Odd Incident, 2010, acrylic on canvas,
36 x 48 in., $1,730

Untitled, n.d.

Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 in.

$ 1,200

New Mexico 271, 2008

Acrylic on canvas

60 x 48 in., $ 2,880

Untitled, 2008

Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 in., $ 2,880

New Mexico 3192, 2008

Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 in.

$ 1,730

Untitled, n.d.

Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 in., $ 2,300

Santa Fe 3, 2006

Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 in., $ 2,880

Untitled, 2005

Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 in., $ 720

1112a

Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 in.

$ 1,200

RH 11, n.d.

Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 in., $ 720

Landscape 6

Acrylic on canvas

40 x 60 in., $ 1,200

New Mexico 64

Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 in., $ 2,300

New Mexico 53

Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 in., $ 2,880

New Mexico 12

Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 in., $ 1,730

Leaving Epcot

Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 in., $ 2,880

Larry's

Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 in., $ 1,200

10411

Acrylic on canvas

48 x 36 in., $ 1,730

38330

Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 in., $ 1,730

Atmospheric Noise #4, 2007-2008

Acrylic on canvas

40 x 30 in., $1,200

Brenda's Window

Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 in., $ 1,730

1101, 2006

Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 in.

$ 1,200

Bang, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 in., $720

9411

Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 in.

$ 1,730

Santa Fe 2, 2006

Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 in., $ 2,300

Exis, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 in., $720

8 Fields Of Red, 2008

Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 in., $ 1,730