Etienne Zack: Reflections on a Quiet City

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Etienne Zack, "Adjourned," 2020

gel transfer and acrylic on linen, 77" x 55", Rachel Topham Photography.

Equinox Gallery is pleased to present Reflections on a Quiet City, a solo exhibition of new works by Etienne Zack. This new body of work collapses many realities together on the same surface by conflating materials (photography and painting) and perspectives. These seemingly incongruent natures find moments of seamless transition and other moments where they each distinctively hold their identity. The result is a series of works that reconcile several modes of looking at the world while simultaneously rendering a sense of a uniformity.

Zack began these paintings while participating in a series of artist residencies in Beijing. The compositions in the paintings are based from walking and cycling through the city, making visual notes and taking photographs. Very much like the act of walking, Zack paints the composition as if he was in situ, depicting the city as he remembers it, as though he is walking forward, looking around. Similarly, Zack’s photographic elements featured in these paintings come from wandering the web in search for street images. These combined imagined architectures hold the artist’s memories and interpretations of moments in urban spaces, much like a walk through the Google Street View of Zack’s mind.