Opening: November 19, 2008, at 8pm, with the artist.
“From the inside and towards the inside”
Michel Soskine will present the second exhibition in Madrid of Daniel Zeller, american artist born in 1975 and currently living in New York.
After his inclusion in “Drawing from the Modern” at MoMA, Zeller’s work has been linked to a group of “micro-artists”. The recent 16 drawings in the current exhibition, overcome that simplistic classification and offer a macroscopic vision entwined with a microscopic vision.
Woven by intricate lines, Zeller’s drawings cover the paper surface in an intuitive manner, a complex rendering of infinitely repeated curves and lines, a combination of biological forms and topographic aerial views, not far from the rhythmic qualities of serial music.
Drawn “all over” the sheet of paper, or , at times, leaving areas of white spaces untouched, the vibrant colored ink and large graphite drawings offer an imaginary organic world where emptiness and fullness contrast with elegance, in an uncertain tension between predictability and spontaneity.
Although non specific, these microscopic organisms are part of a larger topographic map, filled with cellular forms, imaginary rivers , canals , mountains seen far from above, complex unknown planetary systems, a voyage where the eye, traveling inside a delicate web of lines and colors explores at the same time the entire space of the sheet of paper.
Zeller’s process is direct and dynamic: Freedom and rigor combined in gestures repeated to the verge of automatism. Like in oriental calligraphy, gestures become strokes driven by auto-imposed conditions whose aim is to avoid the chaos. A main rule is to always respect what has already been put on the paper, where “every line is sovereign territory”, not to be crossed, nor obscured.
The artist visual references - topographical maps, satellite, planet and stars photography, biological and schematic diagrams- are essentially bi-dimensional images translating a three-dimensional world. The influence of this specific imagery, was partly nurtured in Zeller´s youth by his father´s experience as a scientific investigator.
This combination of scientific interest and poetic territory becomes clearer in evocative titles such as Relative Stability, (2008) Primary integration, (2007) Contextual Osmosis, (2008).
Zeller drawing’s, in the artist’s own words, are “an intuitive response to the parallels and contradictions inherent in the enormous variety of imagery available to us now “.
In conclusion, Zeller’s work form a unique recognizable cosmology with its geographic - organic inventions, bright and “electric” colors together with a profound mastery and understanding of the subtlety of pencil drawing.
Daniel Zeller drawings can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY, The Whitney Museum, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Arkansas Museum, The Crocker Art Museum and various US and European private collections .