JERRY ZENIUK

Exhibition in the Annemarie Verna Gallery, February 6 to March 17, 2001
 

Jerry Zeniuk was born in 1945 in a refugee camp near Lüneburg. His parents were from the Ukraine. In 1950, the family immigrated to the United States.

Since 1969, Jerry Zeniuk has resided in New York, also living part-time in Munich following his appointment at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1992. Here he works as a professor of painting.

Jerry Zeniuk makes all encompassing demands with his painting. The aesthetic experiences that painting enables for the artist and the viewer are also experiences of life and happiness. The successful painting transmits the latter with particular compactness and pronouncedness.

The materials of the artist – paint, brush, canvas, paper – are those prerequisites through which the painter learns over a lifetime to understand and to exhaust his individuality and the potential of painting. They are simple and reliable. For the painter, the break with the tradition of his medium is not up for consideration. The logic of progress is able to achieve nothing here, for the latter destroys that which it leaves behind as outdated and no longer useful. Yet painting as practiced by Jerry Zeniuk is always innovative.

An innovation that is not deficitary, but rather makes use of the radiant newness of the picture to cast a light on the rich inventory of the history of painting. Jerry Zeniuk is an obsessed and exemplary independent spirit, convinced that he himself must always assume responsibility for his decisions.

The dialogue with his painting is a dialogue with his placements, his actions, his reactions. The work, which left alone must exist for itself, will have to assert itself without eloquence. The artist’s consent toward his work will establish itself as a new fact, without sacrificing its explosive force. The new paintings on view in the exhibition enrich the oeuvre of the artist with treasures of great daring.

The major retrospective in 1999 has brought Jerry Zeniuk lasting attention. In Europe, his art has been featured in a number of museums, in several cases with substantial concentration on his works, such as in Winterthur, Bonn, Munich and Kassel.

The Annemarie Verna Gallery has represented the artist since 1977. In the ensuing years, the gallery has hosted seven solo and many group exhibitions.