ZAK PREKOP
OCTOBER 26 - DECEMBER 15, 2012
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OCTOBER 26 - DECEMBER 15, 2012
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“A great shift culminated in the era of Bach. Before the Baroque, perception was sequence-dominated (i.e. contrapuntal lines), and afterward, perception focused on simultaneity (chords). We can and do commonly perceive both of these dimensions at once, but not always with equal focus. In addition, the dimension of orchestration has been awesomely expanded from Bach's time to our own. To meaningfully ingest all of these perspectives, we may switch between these sonic views as though rotating a cube to see it from each side in turn, focusing attention on lines here, harmonic progressions there, and large scale transitions of amplitude or timbre at other times. We flit between multiple perceptual modes, but our minds will also tend to merge and group the sounds, perceiving a totality on some single central inner hearing ear. This Cyclopean (Julesz 1971) ear is the central single "ear" in which we hear with the most profound feeling.” - Laurie Spiegel, 1999
I’ve been listening to Laurie Spiegel’s synth music form the late 70’s lately and I found this statement about Bach and simultaneity in a text called Music as Mirror of Mind on her website. It makes sense in defining music like hers, which is built from layers of electronic patterns that shift more depending on how you listen to it rather than from beginning to end. I also find that it models how I look at or think about looking at paintings. It’s a process of collapsing together multiple types of perception. When looking at paintings, an awareness of material reality coincides with the perception of an interior, pictorial space, so a painting is looked both at and through. I work with this literally in many of my paintings where one actually sees through the semi-transparent canvas to its other side, so that looking into or through is again a process of perceiving real material, not only the kind of painterly space that has been constructed historically by conventions like the rectangle of stretcher bars or an oval framing in a portrait. On top of this is an awareness of time, in which a viewer deciphers or tries to decipher what has been done by the artist, at which point the painting acts as a record of decisions and processes. I like the idea of hearing or seeing in different ways at once, especially as Laurie Spiegel describes that as some kind of ultimate perceptual experience. - Zak Prekop, 2012
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Thomas Duncan Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by New York-based artist Zak Prekop. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.
Recent exhibitions: Art Statements, Art Basel (with Harris Lieberman); Harris Lieberman Gallery, New York; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; Pittsburgh Biennial, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Upcoming exhibitions: Painter, Painter, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh, NC (solo exhibition).
Zak Prekop, Thomas Duncan, Los Angeles