Von Lintel Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of recent abstract paintings by New York painter John Zinsser. This is the artist’s sixth solo show with the gallery after a twenty-year-plus association that goes back to the gallery’s beginnings in Munich in the early 1990s.

Zinsser is known for bold physical color works that celebrate process and materiality. Archetypal geometric forms invite viewer associations to post-war American painting—abstract expressionism, minimalism and pop. Zinsser’s methods combine the visual DNA of modern masters without being dry, distanced, or overtly appopriational. Rather, they engage the adventure of their own physical making as a kind of dramatic performance.

Playfulness and improvisation, then, are parts of [Zinsser’s] process but within fairly strict, self-imposed limits. For instance, in most of his work, a layer of brushstrokes or patterning overlies a layer of base color. But for Zinsser, the brushstroke can’t simply be a mark; he understands it and utilizes it as an iconic figure in the history of art.

(Sharon Butler, Studio Visit: John Zinsser, Two Coats of Paint, 2016)

John Zinsser was born in New York City in 1961 and studied art, art history and literature at Yale University. He co-founded Journal of Contemporary Art in 1987 and lectures at The New School. He has had over 40 solo shows in the U.S. and Europe, and is known in Europe for his association with monochrome painters of a previous generation. He was represented by Thomas Solomon’s Garage and his work is included in many notable public and private collections such as the Sammlung Goetz, Wadsworth Atheneum and Yale Art Gallery.