Index: Eric Zener


The Basics

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It took me a while to get past the sheer masterfulness of the technique to grok the lasting point of Eric Zener’s paintings. It’s the idea of water as a medium for human experience. It reduces us, isolates us, dwarfs us so profoundly that it coaxes from us our most fundamental expressions. To surrender to water is to shed complexity. Splashing, floating, leaping, submerging, basking, even walking along the ocean shore, are dense, but utterly basic, experiences. It’s that same kind of surrender that transforms this tightly focused series of paintings into something much more human and universal. Oh, and the technique is ridiculous. (On exhibit at Gallery Henoch, New York City, until May 9th.)