ZAK KITNICK
Lime in the Coconut
8 January to 27 February 2016
On 8 January 2016, Mary Boone Gallery will open at its Fifth Avenue location Lime in the Coconut, an exhibition curated by Piper Marshall of works by ZAK KITNICK.
I like zooming in and out.
Isolating parts of images, adding duration.
Extending, unpacking, and diluting.
I like a convention that can be applied regardless of content.
- Zak Kitnick, 2015
Zak Kitnick redeploys and transforms objects and tools usually associated with sorting, ordering, and filtering. Screens, shelving, packaging, and taxonomic posters are used to transport meaning and refocus us onto a contemporary rethinking of how information and order have been transformed in our post-industrial, technologically managed lives.
For the exhibition, Lime in the Coconut, the artist gives special attention to two rationales of operation: concentration/dilution and expansion/ contraction. The result is a series of work that utilize metaphors of produce to frustrate modes of production and dissemination.
In one gallery, Kitnick has produced a series of works that transform industrial shelving. Alleviating the form from its function, Kitnick repurposes the shelving, collapsing it flat as if for shipment. The load-bearing surfaces, offered to the viewer as both substrate and storage, reframe a commercial image depicting a green olive branch. These pixilated images note their commercial print origin and emphasize the journey from information to image. Lining the walls, the resulting works are arranged in thirteen permutations. A series of approaches emerge: cuts, crops and enlargements. In their varied organization, these works simultaneously perform and stutter digital flows.
For the other gallery, Kitnick produced new works exploring the possibility of expanding without diluting, and contracting without concentrating. Researching the culture of constructed product shots and organic metaphors, he has focused on the structure of the “blooming onion”, an onion that has been cut into the form of a deep-fried flower. Like the olive branch, the “blooming onion” is a symbol of celebratory decoration made for sharing. A hand-crafted onion never looks as good as its simulation. Heightening this perceptual gap, Kitnick has produced bronzes derived from idealized product shots.
Kitnick is an artist who selects, alters, and arranges images and objects with new operating procedures. The exhibition reveals new approaches that demonstrate the way information rubs against information, images find new surfaces and the real is reconfigured in an age of false starts.
The exhibition, at 745 Fifth Avenue, is view through 27 February 2016. For further information, please contact Ron Warren at the Gallery, or visit our website www.maryboonegallery.com.
