Wednesday, September 15 @ 5:15 – 6:15pm
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Online at Zoom: go.wisc.edu/uw-art-talks
A painter and drawer whose work has hovered in the rich nebulae between abstraction and figuration, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung also works in three-dimensions—indeed, her paintings and drawings often feature relief or sculptural elements. Quilting has re-emerged as a key factor in her work, draping textiles hang on a wall or sit on a plinth alongside stretched canvases, themselves often containing sewn elements with swatches of painting collaged together into new geometries that challenge rectangularity, the elements of which create unexpected continuities between their disparate parts. Among the 3-D works are a series of folded paper pieces, highly hybridized concatenations built around a basic accordion structure (something that dates back nearly 15 years in her work), forcing their alternating planes off the wall and out into the space, like a dollhouse scrim, privacy screen, or theater backdrop. “The folding has always been about the book,” says the artist. “About the gap, the enjambment, what’s missing or lost. What closes and opens. What hides.” Delicate and fragile—thin-skinned one might say—the folded paper pieces express an appreciation for the ephemeral, a love of the temporary, the makeshift. These are closely related to floor-standing and plinth sculptures that are even more like stages; scale model setups, some with miniature artworks hanging within them, these continue Zuckerman-Hartung’s longstanding interrogation of the presentational context for painting. Three smaller folded paper works, for instance, are mounted on a large unprimed canvas, gridded in pencil. Having been brought together, they form a constellation, a new singularity gently brought into existence out of diverse uniquenesses.
Zuckerman-Hartung has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions over the years. Recent exhibitions include Flim-Flam at Corbett vs. Dempsey; Whitney Biennial 2014 (New York, NY); Painter, Painter at the Walker Art Center, (Minneapolis, MN); The Program at ReMap4 (Athens, Greece); Michelle Grabner: I Work From Home at MOCA Cleveland (Cleveland, OH); Shakti at Brand New Gallery (Milan, Italy); and a solo exhibition, Chlorophyll Bluess at Diana Lowenstein (Miami, FL). Zuckerman-Hartung is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award; a full scholarship to attend the Ox-Bow Fall Session Residency in Saugatuck, Michigan; and named an Artist-in-Residence at Cannonball in Miami, Florida and at the Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva Island, Florida. Her work is in the collections of the Aspen Museum of Art, Aspen, Colorado; DePaul University Art Museum, Chicago, Illinois; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; and The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The artist earned a BA from The Evergreen State College and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2015, Zuckerman-Hartung was appointed a Critic in Painting and Printmaking at Yale University where she remains today. Zuckerman-Hartung lives and works in Norfolk, Connecticut. mollyzuckermanhartung.com