01/05 to 22/06/2014
Daniel Zeller’s Chronozone, a monumental drawing from 1999, will be on view in the newly founded Gleichapel, a “public room” seen through a window situated in the upper Marais neighborhood of Paris. This first presentation in the ‘chapel’ initiates a series of collaborative projects for the future and Daniel Zeller’s first solo project since exhibiting at g-module in the years 2004 and 2006).
About Chronozone
In 1999, the highly detailed Chronozone gets drawn as part of Daniel Zeller’s seminal series of three large, precision pencil drawings on Arches paper. The work depicts visionary space beyond cartography or biological illustration. It is monumental, not merely because of its oversized format, but due to a densely drawn journey from fractal dimensions to universal infinities, balanced with the lightness of a cloud. One dominating area seems like an array of alveoli formations shifting from interplanetary bodies to surfaces of the earth or the moon. In areas throughout the drawing, small markers appear as if labeling an action of pertinence, to decode. Infected? Evolving? Transmigrating? The title Chronozone evokes a time and space continuum with a beginning and an end. Through Daniel’s illustration one could interpret notions of data, logic, relative scale and evolution as well as sentiments of beauty, solitude, meditation and spirituality.
During the 90s in the USA, specifically in the agglomeration of Brooklyn, namely Williamsburg and DUMBO (Down Under The Manhattan Bridge Overpass) and the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the dynamic for piled on obsessive abstraction and scale was in the air. For the first time at one of New York City’s alternative exhibition spaces called Exit Art/The First World[1] presented was “Monumental Drawings” in September 2000. The alternative space exhibited artists under the radar, and Daniel being one unknown at the time to noteworthy collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Albright Knox Gallery, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and other institutions, was put on the map with Chronozone.
The Chronozone presentation gives a glimpse into the recent art history of that period in New York. The wave of art making in the 1990s, post 1980s neo-geo, neo-expressionism, post-pop movements gave way to a magnet generation of New York based artists exploring a realm that Charles and Ray Eames approached with the films, The Powers of Ten[2]. Obsessive art gave way to infinities of multiple directions. Daniel made Chronozone in his home studio of DUMBO inspired by the pulse of the period, during the Hubble telescopes operation and pre-google earth. Pierogi 2000, an original Williamsburg Gallery, exhibited artists like Daniel Zeller, James Siena and Steven Charles.
A slew of other galleries exhibited artists such as Bruce Pearson, Fred Tomaselli, Tom Friedman, Alexander Ross, David Moreno, John Morris, Giles Lyon, Marc Dean Veca, Christian Schumann, Nina Bovasso, Carl Fudge, Michele Segre, Mark Sheinkman, Lee Etheridge, Marsha Cottrell, and Jane Fine each exploring there own chronozones and having their own amplitude of process and meditation towards the unlimited.
Daniel Zeller’s drawings are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC), Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, NY), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LA, CA), among others and present in private collections throughout the world.
Image :
Daniel Zeller, Chronozone, 1999, Graphite pencil on paperPaper size: 177,5 x 127.4 cm
Image size: 162 x 111.5 cm
Signed and dated “ZELLER ’99” lower right and on verso “Chronozone”
Provenance:
Claude Bernard Gallery, LTD, New York
Private Collection, London
Exhibited
Chronozone, Gleichapel, Paris, 2014
Monumental Drawings, Exit Art/The First World, New York, 2000, Curated by Papo Calo and Jeanette Ingberman
[1] Exit Art, founded Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Calo, New York City. See Resources: The Museum of Modern Art and/or Guide to the Exit Art Archive
[2]Charles and Ray Eames “Powers of 10”, 1977, an American short documentary about the relative scale of the universe.