Steve Zolin

Steve Zolin’s art possesses strong movement, similar to a frenzy in which our gaze runs rapidly along the canvas in search of information, a kind of uneasiness, which carries within itself the disquietude and is pressed to go somewhere.

The message seems urgent, an idea reinforced with a composition that is highly dynamic. The scene itself is in permanent movement, with lines of force and action, which are very highlighted. The scenes are endowed with a complex nature, impregnated with several levels, stages and floors. Zolin alternates between fast lines with pronounced curves coated with curiosity and short, straight, agitated lines that accentuate its nervousness.

He changes between areas packed with information and others that require less exhaustive reading - something that creates a counterpoint capable of accelerating the pace and cadences. The perspectives are sharp and the scenes never seem to have an end, all this due to Zolin’s excellent use of space. At times, we have several perspectives taking us to the horizon or towards infinity, it functions like a pure network of tunnels, which provides several exits out of the image. There is a distortion of space, or of time itself: as if various spaces were simultaneously represented, or a passage in time had taken place.

There is always tension and sometimes even drama raised between figures who seem to dance, fly, fall or run away.

An Impressionist style portrays city scenes, interiors of bars, restaurants, etc. In a permanent tumult where through movement, the forms are distorted and merged amongst themselves. It’s as if the dream realm embraced reality and all that is left is an impression of the scene, a kind of vision, so akin to dreams.

By Pedro Boaventura • Excerpt from Masters of Painting - Volume 1

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Born in 1972 and raised in West Orange, NJ, Steve Zolin earned his BFA cum laud at Washington University in 1994 and won an MFA Fellowship at Florida State University, graduating in 2005. Between degrees he spent nine years in Santa Fe, New Mexico enmeshed in the art scene there. Married to photographer Robin Noble-Zolin, he now resides in Manhattan where he exhibits regularly.

Zolin has exhibited widely in New York, New Jersey, Santa Fe, Toronto, and Florida. He recently completed a commission by the New York City Parks Department for a 28’ mural in Manhattan’s First Park. Zolin has shown multiple years at Scope New York, and was a featured solo artist at the 2012 (E)merge Art Fair in Washington, DC. His work was in the 24th International Juried Show at the Visual Arts Center of NJ, curated by Susan Kismaric of the Museum of Modern Art, NY. His most recent installation, sponsored by Chashama and The National Endowment for the Arts, explored space, gesture, and movement, and was entitled “Unstraightness.” Other highlights include solo exhibitions at the Clifton Arts Center and Barn Theatre, as well as murals for Senator Joseph Lieberman’s home synagogue in Connecticut and for Santa Fe Public Schools.

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The idea that the fabric of space is curved, and that the invisible machinery of the universe that whirls around us could be conveyed through art, funnels through my gestural drawing style and infuses all of my subjects.

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