McKenzie Fine Art: Deborah Zlotsky 2023 Exhibition


	Deborah Zlotsky: Today is Yesterday and Tomorrow March 31 - May 7, 2023
	Deborah Zlotsky’s lively oil paintings are composed of vivid, curving geometries combined with stripes, some broad, others narrow, arranged horizontally or vertically. Some bands end abruptly, while others continue their movement, weaving through the composition. Sharp, saturated colors alternate with softer, muted sections, while flat passages can become unexpectedly dimensional, volumetric and weighty, with playful blips and bulges. Although predominantly frontal and set in a shallow space, the paintings usually maintain a figure/ground relationship. Colorful forms may angle suddenly to create depth, only to flatten again; drips, smears, and stains imply the passage of time. Careful looking reveals trompe l’oeil elements, such as string and stitched thread that encircle and bind the compositional parts. The blur of time and history, both personal and historical, informs these recent paintings. They are an expression of the artist’s experiences growing up Jewish and her awareness of how this part of her identity shapes her understanding of past and present, especially in light of rising anti-Semitism. Her paintings incorporate an engagement with the visual language of graphic patterns and emblems, such as the stripes of prison garb and tallit (prayer shawls), as seen in her painting, Stacked. Others refer to the visual symbol chai (Hebrew for “life”) or, in the more intimate painting, Shiva, seven stitches of thread refer to the seven days of mourning. Several works express the interconnectivity of family and generational ties, while the Diaspora paintings convey the idea of movement and variation within a tightly circumscribed system. Zlotsky notes that “...abstraction is a language to tell a story obliquely, to offer a narrative in plain sight.” Deborah Zlotsky has a B.A. in the History of Art from Yale University and an M.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from the University of Connecticut. She has exhibited her work in solo and group gallery and museum shows throughout the United States for the past twenty years. Zlotsky has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (2019) and NYFA (2012 and 2018) and residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Bogliasco Foundation, among many others. Her work is held in numerous public and institutional collections, including the Albany Institute of History and Art in New York, the William Benton Museum of Art, CT, the Frances Tang Teaching Museum, NY, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, and the Borusan Collection, Istanbul. Zlotsky is Professor of Experimental and Foundational Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design.