New Zealand-born Artist's Debut Exhibition at David Zwirner Gallery Reveals a Diverse Array of Abstract Artwork

Courtesy of David Zwirner

David Zwirner is hosting a solo exhibition featuring new paintings by New Zealand artist Emma McIntyre, currently living in Los Angeles. The exhibition period is from September 21 to October 28, 2023, and is located at 34 East 69th Street, New York. This exhibition is her first in New York.

McIntyre's paintings are characterized by a transformative process that involves organic interactions between her selected materials, such as oil and unconventional substances like oxidized iron. She initiates the creative journey by pouring paint onto her canvases from above, allowing colors to pool, splash, and stretch organically across the surface. The artist then adjusts her supports, adding additional layers of paint while using brushes, rags, and even her fingers to further modify the artwork. McIntyre draws inspiration from a diverse range of artists from art history, including Piero della Francesca, Jean-Antoine Watteau, Pierre Bonnard, Cy Twombly, Joan Mitchell, and Sigmar Polke. Her compositions strike a balance between spontaneity and deliberate action, existing on the edge of perception, where they continuously form and reform before the viewer's eyes.

▲ Installation view, Emma Mclntyre: An echo, a stain, David Zwirner New York, 2023, Courtesy of David Zwirner

The artworks on display demonstrate McIntyre's exploration of painting's endless potential. Some paintings exhibit centrifugal energy, while others gravitate with pigments cascading downward. The artist's index of mark-making guides her process, exposing the rich diversity of painting. McIntyre also incorporates symbols and gestures, including floral and faunal motifs, which emerge from abstraction and allude to the landscape genre. These motifs, at times inspired by other artists, are reinterpreted through her unique paint handling techniques and recur across multiple canvases, tugging at various art-historical moments while staying grounded in her distinctive artistic expression.

The exhibition features works created in various scales, from vast paintings to more intimate pieces. McIntyre utilizes the smaller canvases as experimental sites to test new ideas and elements, which then influence her larger compositions, fostering harmony between these two extremes. Her practice is marked by its rhizomatic nature, with each painting leading to the next in an ongoing process of experimentation and evolution.

▲ Installation view, Emma Mclntyre: An echo, a stain, David Zwirner New York, 2023, Courtesy of David Zwirner

McIntyre's work epitomizes a continuous state of becoming, oscillating between positive and negative space, abstraction and representation, transparency and opacity, and various other dichotomies. The artist's aim is to capture moments of the sublime while also highlighting the materiality of the medium, creating a perpetual state of in-between.

Born in 1990 in Auckland, New Zealand, Emma McIntyre embarked on her artistic journey with a strong academic foundation. She graduated from Auckland University of Technology in 2011 and went on to achieve an MFA from the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland in 2016. Her commitment to honing her craft led her to pursue a second MFA from the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, in 2021. In recognition of her dedication and talent, McIntyre was awarded a Fulbright Graduate Award in 2019.

▲ Installation view, Emma Mclntyre: An echo, a stain, David Zwirner New York, 2023, Courtesy of David Zwirner

Emma McIntyre's artistic prowess has been showcased in various solo exhibitions, highlighting her evolving body of work. Some notable exhibitions include "Pearl Diver" at Château Shatto in Los Angeles (2023), "Madonna of the Pomegranate" at Coastal Signs in Auckland (2022), "Up bubbles her amorous breath" at Air de Paris in Paris (2022), and "Heat" at Mossman Gallery in Wellington (2020). Additionally, her work was featured in "L'Almanach 23," the fourth edition of the biennial hosted at Le Consortium in Dijon, France in 2023.

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Blue YIM, yimyoungseo1010@naver.com