Perrotin Seoul is happy to announce Zach Harris’ first show in Asia, and his second with the gallery, following his exhibition at Perrotin Paris in May 2017.
Zach Harris’ carved panel paintings vacillate between pictorial realms. Within a single work, mathematical precision—an interest in systems, algorithms, and order—is integrated with feverishly drawn visions and complex color harmonies. The diverse aesthetic of Harris’ work eschews ready-made identity. Paint is used as an exploratory medium, while intricate shallow relief wood carving allows for intensive planning and exacting craftsmanship. The illusory nature of Harris’ painting skillfully modulates the tactile three-dimensionality of the object itself. Order and intuition, the tangible and the chimerical, the physical and the fanciful—these are the tensions with which Harris’ work is fraught. A carved frame, rigidly geometric, merges into a visionary architectural fragment through which one sails into a vast landscape whose clouds are made of tiny, hand-carved Bosch-like figures.
For Harris, the aesthetics of the traditional picture frame, which have historically been overlooked as a non-art form, become problematized. Instead, they are used as an integral element of the entire visual field of the painting. The frame is not only a bounding element, one that delimits the physical parameters for a picture, but an entity that threatens to overtake the content of the image. Harris previously achieved this by giving the frame aesthetic prominence and making it the object of much artistic labor. Keyhole Gate (2018) imagines the furthest extension of this encroachment, as the frame becomes a checkerboard op-art screen across the entire surface, revealing a vast sky scene viewed through dramatically angled keyhole windows.
Zodiac Scroll (2018) takes the shape of an ornate architectural cornice. This provides Harris with an ideal form for invention, as the facets, curves, and niches of the moulding become the surfaces upon which Harris can graft his combination of pictorial languages. Here, geometric motifs—the errant Fleur-de-lis that shape-shifts with every iteration on the panel—coexist with the otherworldly. Silhouettes of centaurs and sublime landscapes alternate as they recede into the distance, an exaggerated perspective that rejects any claim to spatial representation.
Critics have marveled at Harris’ ability to engage a number of pictorial traditions without relying too heavily on any single one. Early American modernism, visionary landscape painting, outsider art, and West Coast eccentricity all play some role in his aesthetic. Allusions to Persian miniatures, Islamic ornamentation, Mandalas, and Christian altarpieces have also been gleaned from Harris’ work. A practitioner of meditation, Harris imbues the creative act with productive passivity. He seeks a kind of automatism in producing images whereby his hand moves and etches without conscious thought. This process, and the effect achieved by it, places Harris in a long lineage of esoteric imaging and hallucinatory diagramming. Mystery is offset by mathematics, and structure, in turn, is softened by fancy. He manages to evoke a sense of spirituality that defies specificity, yet is keenly felt. Harris captures a subtle, otherworldly sense of light and space without recourse to the tropes of “spirituality” in art and culture.
Zach Harris
Born in 1976 in Santa Rosa, California, Zach Harris lives and works in Los Angeles. His work is included in the collections of the Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Arts. This is his second solo exhibition with Perrotin.
