DVAA Member since January 2018
Robert Zurer
Website:
About:
Robert Zurer is a native New Yorker and has lived and worked in New York City all his life. Very recently he relocated to Philadelphia where he now maintains his studio practice. He has been drawing and painting since he was a child. He is primarily self-taught although he did study privately for some years with the painter Wade Schuman. He has been an active member of the NYC Crit Club since its inception in 2017. Since 2013, his work has been exhibited in numerous group shows in and around New York. His work has also been shown in group shows in Nashville, New Haven, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Grand Rapids, Philadelphia and Edinburgh, Scotland.
Artist Statement:
“I paint to grow. I paint to be surprised. I paint in an attempt to seduce the unknown, to wish it into being and freeze that fleeting glimpse in time. This 'unknown', once it is conjured, is still ambiguous but mysteriously very familiar, very close to me.
It's very romantic, this trusting search in the dark. It is a dialog, a call and response. It makes me feel less alone. It is a struggle to stay open and pay attention and wait and wait and wait. I love this struggle. I never plan what I will paint. I really never know what will arrive, but my paintings always turn out to be about our human condition - caught suspended between the earth and the stars.
I love oil paint. I love the way it can shine. I love the way it is slick and slides against itself. I love the wordless, mysterious meaning of color. I love that color is infinite, like music. I love that it can be always in motion. I love that it can vibrate. I am not interested in the static. I don't want to play with ideas. I want the flow. I want the juice. I want the passion. I want to live in the question.”
2020 Severo Antonelli Da Vinci Fellowship Recipient:
Through the Da Vinci Fellowship program, Robert Zurer will present Write What You See, an interactive psychological/spiritual experiment, the intent of which is to explore our collective unconscious. The exhibition will take the form of oil paintings about the human condition which all contain ambiguous narratives and symbols. The titles will be intentionally withheld allowing the viewer to make their own meanings, unencumbered by the limitations often set by reading a title.
Pencils and post-it notes will be available nearby and viewers will be encouraged to spend time with a work, write their own title, narrative or interpretation, and then place it on the wall next to the painting. The exhibition will culminate in diverse records of individual reactions to the work being published to the DVAA website.
It is my hope that the Da Vinci Fellowship program, in allowing me to share my work, will expand and deepen my interaction with the creative community in Philly. — Robert Zurer
Exhibitions at DVAA:
