John Zurier 'Night Paintings'    Mar 1 - Apr 26, 2008

Please click here to read more about the exhibition

Front room, COUNTERclockwise from right, at window:

1. Night 24, 2007- 2008 distemper on linen; 42" x 26"

2.Night 20, 2007 distemper on linen; 30" x 20"

3. Night 26, 2008 distemper on linen; 30" x 20"

4. Night 19, 2007 distemper on linen; 30" x 20"

5. Night 25, 2007- 2008 distemper on linen; 42" x 26"

6. Night 21, 2007 distemper on linen; 30" x 20"

7. Night 23, 2007 distemper on linen; 30" x 20"

Second room, CLOCKwise from left at entry

8. Night 18, 2007 distemper on linen; 30" x 20"

9. Night 22, 2007 distemper on linen; 30" x 20"

10. Night 14, 2007 distemper on linen; 30" x 20"

11. Night 17, 2007 distemper on linen; 30" x 20"

12. Night 27, 2008 distemper on linen; 30" x 20"

(PLEASE NOTE: This exhibition of JOHN ZURIER NIGHT PAINTINGS has been selected by Director Okwui Enwezor to travel in its entirety to the 7th Gwangju Biennale in Korea in September 2008)

EARLY DAYBREAK

A few last stars linger on.
I see them from my window. The sky is pale,
A remote hint of day begins from afar.
A silence rests spread out over the lake,
a whisper lies in wait among the trees,
and my old garden listens, sleepily,
to breaths of the night that sweep across the road.

-Edith S�dergran

From: Love & Solitude Edith S�dergran Selected Poems 1916-1923
Translated by Stina Katchadourian

John Zurier on distemper:

Distemper is the name given to a technique of tempera painting that uses pigments mixed into a water-based animal glue as a binding medium. A painting made with distemper can be identified by its dry, chalky, non-reflecting surface and its opaque brilliant color. The closet comparisons to distemper paintings would be the dry velvety color surface of pastel and the pure color painting of fresco. Distemper is one of the oldest painting mediums known, dating from antiquity.

In a few of the Night series paintings, for the distemper I used casein, a glue derived from skim milk, and in some I used a fish glue made from Sturgeon, called Isinglass. In all of the paintings shown at Larry Becker Contemporary Art, I have made the distemper by dissolving the pigments in rabbit skin glue. And the paintings have been painted on various weaves of unprimed Belgian linen.

It was seeing a badly damaged, restored and still unvarnished 15th century distemper painting of Christ the Redeemer by Antonio da Pavia in Mantova, along with work by followers of Andrea Mantegna that first excited my interest in the medium.

Distemper creates one of the most beautiful surfaces of color I have ever seen. The delicate color and surface is a result of the pigments being suspended in the glue so that the paint is simply clinging onto the surface of the fabric. The delicacy of distemper, how it interacts with the unprimed weave of the linen, and how light hits the dry open surface of color is why I am drawn to it.