Stephanie H. Shih: Domestic Bliss

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST:
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Alyina Zaidi
Facts and hearsay—an encyclopaedia of various natural and less natural phenomena, 2024
acrylic on canvas, quadriptych
overall: 77 x 200 in. (195.6 x 508 cm.)
each: 77 x 50 in. (195.5 x 127 cm.)

Growing up admiring the textiles her mother collected and the fabrics her godmother hand-printed, Zaidi emulates textiles in her paintings. While she continues to borrow elements from Central Asian Suzanis, she also now depicts frilly fabrics and tudor sleeves inspired by, in her words, “the sumptuous qualities of Tudor and Elizabethan paintings.” Zaidi marvels at how historically, easily transported textiles offered a rare, almost magical, opportunity to behold the cultures of another country. The silk cotton trade’s fluidity and ability to carry cultural information changed the shape of the world. It shapes Zaidi’s painted world too—her universe also seems to be mapped as if it exists on a rippling textile, where each fold offers new opportunities to open portals to different scenes across time and space. The characters who inhabit these scenes reveal that each fold is subject to its own laws of gravity.

In Lost in the belly of a whale, Zaidi establishes stronger narrative threads with more action than her previous work. Here, nomadic white strawberries attempt to herd their goats and are at war with imperial frogs. In the top left register of Facts and hearsay—an encyclopaedia of various natural and less natural phenomena, these frogs steal the moon. Angels purchase Moons for sale and, in Dubious benediction, guard pickle jars of frogs and moons. On occasion, the unreliable nature of history emerges where portions of the composition are swallowed by dark orbs Zaidi calls “the cave of the unknown.” These nebulous scenes offer a mode of abstraction for the artist and indicate that there is more to learn about this universe.

Further embracing reality-warping unknowns, Zaidi’s paintings are filled with magic and mythology. As in previous work by the artist, cherry tomatoes and radishes become spirits, angels with opulent tentacled wings populate most paintings, chilis hang to ward off the evil eye, and rituals are performed around the moon for luck. New supernatural elements in this body of work include poltergeists who lurk in windows and sacred trees. In Zaidi’s painting Euphemia and the assassin, she alludes to a version of the story of Saint Euphemia’s martyrdom in which she was thrown into an arena with lions meant to kill her. In the Islamic tradition of indirect representation, rather than painting Euphemia as a person, Zaidi paints her as a bejeweled textile surrounded by lacy fabric. In a playful rendition of the tale, here, Euphemia is cradled in a hammock of lions’ tails.

Alyina Zaidi
Euphemia and the assassin, 2024
acrylic on canvas
54 x 40 in. (137.2 x 101.6 cm.)

The allegories and symbols in Zaidi’s work hold unstable multiplicitous meanings. For instance, jewelry signifies power and wealth when worn by the frogs, or it acts as a benediction when gifted by angels in paintings like Dubious benediction. Meanwhile in Perfumed veils and gauzy tails, strings of pearls and chains may symbolize containment and a desire to break free. 

Zaidi’s surreal universe oscillates between the macroscopic and microscopic. In her richly informational paintings, fact and fiction are muddled, as myths, hearsay, superstitions, and the unknowable reflect reality in all its multitude.

Press release by Kirsten Cave.

Press

Color Theory: Artist Anna Kunz Uses the Power of Pigment to Spark Emotion

LUXE INTERIORS + DESIGN

For Chicago-based painter Anna Kunz, color never sits still. “In a composition, it moves and vibrates,” she says. “It’s alive and engaging—the opposite of static.”

The artist, whose aesthetic forebears include such people as Robert Irwin and Josef Albers, learned about color’s emotive powers early in life. Her father worked at the Art Institute of Chicago, where a young Kunz often waited for him while parked in front of Mark Rothko’s shimmering Untitled (Purple, White, and Red). “I observed how some people laughed, some got angry and others wept,” she recalls. “At 7 years old, I didn’t know color would be my lifelong pursuit—but I saw its potential to evoke a response.”

Today, Kunz—who divides her studio time between the Austin neighborhood and rural Michigan—is known for making viewers rethink the hues they take for granted with works on paper, canvas and textiles. “I enjoy fairly simple geometric forms because I am interested in pigments being perceived first,” she says, noting that color can affect everything from our heartbeats to our circulatory systems. She also explores how the perception of a particular hue depends on its surroundings. “Albers put it perfectly,” says Kunz, paraphrasing the 20th-century German American artist: “No one color is true—it is only determined by its relation to another color.”

In Kunz’s Austin studio, smaller works on paper are arrayed on countertops while larger canvases are spread on the floor. She moves between them via wooden planks in a kind of dance, painting to the sounds of experimental music. “My process is generative—I consider everything as part of a continuum,” says Kunz, who applies oils with a brush and acrylics with objects plucked from the domestic realm—spatulas, hairbrushes, bits of fabric, curlers—as well as found items, like leaves. “And I use a lot of water, because I like to dissolve hard-edged boundaries,” she adds. Kunz builds a rich depth of color by layering multiple thin films of pigment. She works with only a couple of different hues in a given day, assigning each one its own specific task: “For example, I might want my red to feel submissive in one piece and more dominant in another,” the artist explains. “I use colors like characters to satisfy different formal problems.”

Kunz, who has an upcoming solo show at New York’s Alexander Berggruen gallery in May and a group show at Detroit’s Library Street Collective in July, knows a painting is finished when it starts to take on a life of its own and feels unexpected—“like a surprise,” she describes. “When I sense light emitting from the color, I feel I’ve created a kind of optimism, and that’s when it’s time to leave it alone.”

Publications

Cara Nahaul: Tender Island

Cara Nahaul: Tender Island was published on the occasion of the gallery’s eponymous exhibition, which will run from April 10-May 8, 2024. This catalogue features a foreword by Kirsten Cave and an interview between Cara Nahaul and writer, editor, and curator Anneka French, which took place in February 2024.