Nowhere Anywhere Here
May 15 – July 3, 2010
Gallery One

Exhibition Text

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ANDREW RAFACZ is pleased to announce Nowhere Anywhere Here, new paintings and sculptures by Zachary Buchner in Gallery One.

Chicago, IL, May 15, 2010- ANDREW RAFACZ continues the 2010 season with Nowhere Anywhere Here, new works by Zachary Buchner. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. It continues through Saturday, June 19, 2010.

Producing paintings that look and feel like sculptures and sculptures that address painting’s primary concerns, Buchner has created a body of work that upends both mediums and, in doing so, investigates place in an elemental way. The artist is interested in making work that demands that the viewer shift down in a world where experiences are at their most accelerated. Barnett Newman wrote “”the painting should give man a sense of place, that he knows he’s there, so he’s aware of himself”” and this resonates in Buchner’s work and is an important point of departure for the artist. This slowing down in order to recapture a sense of place or presentness is fundamental to the work.

This also guides the way Buchner’s own ‘hand’ is evident in the production of both the paintings and sculptures. In the sculptures, the drips on otherwise clean architectural forms imply a gravity and orientation that make the viewer aware of the artist’s action and placement within the work. Furthermore, the inclusion of particular pedestals, often painted and even peculiar, reveals how the display and placement of the work is thoroughly considered. In the paintings, plaster is poured over stretched burlap and manipulated by the artist, undoing the traditional notion of a painterly surface. Numerous multidirectional paint applications, creating at once both depth and false shadows, imply the specific choices and positions of the artist.

For Buchner, the notion that paintings should make contact with the world is at the core of his practice and concerns. The title of the exhibition simultaneously addresses the contemporary lack of center and the openness of possibility as a result. It reasserts the necessity for art that makes you take your time, to notice where you are, that you are here, in this moment.

ZACHARY BUCHNER (Canadian, b. 1979) lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. He received his M.F.A. from Northwestern University in 2005. Recent group exhibitions include Under Construction Show at the Poor Farm (The Suburban) Manawa, Wisconsin and Rattled by the Rush at Andrew Rafacz. His work can also be seen in the forthcoming New Icon, curated by Britton Bertran, at LUMA, Chicago, IL.