March 6-31, 2015

Cross MacKenzie Gallery is pleased to present this solo exhibition by artist Zimra Beiner. The artist’s work is inspired by the everyday tools and objects ubiquitous in our domestic lives. In the artist’s own words,

“The everyday is interpreted, re-contextualized and abstracted as a reflection of life passing through me.”

Beiner creates forms that seem vaguely familiar, a sink knob, a baseball bat, a rolling pin but his sculptures diverge from those functional tools into soft cartoonish shapes of his imagination. A banquette-like table is set with his own personal, everyday objects, stretching 15 feet like a 3 dimensional time line of the artist’s life. It feels rather like the results of an archeologist’s excavation, utensils unearthed for us to study and discover their presumed function. His earthy tones underscore the feeling that these implements could have been found at the bottom of the sea or dug up from the earth, caked in rust or dirt over time. But the arrangement on the platform is far from haphazard, there is a lovely rhythm in the carefully arranged elements and their relationships to one another on the table.   

Beiner deftly makes these objects in clay and forms them with a purposefully naïve hand, the pieces remind one of the Play-Doh forms of a toddler. But this highly trained artist is in full control of this pseudo-elementary approach and balances it perfectly with his refined presentation. Zimra Beiner has a Master’s degree from the renowned ceramics art school of Alfred University and he has studied with the best. His shapes evoke those of Philip Guston and share their raw sense of humor. 

A parallel focus of the sculptor is his giant amorphous, glazed, ceramic blobs that defy their material by standing upright with their polished gloss surface at odds with their unlikely bulbous, organic shapes. 

The gallery will also be presenting some of Beiner’s lively pen and gouaches works on paper, of layered shapes and shadows of his tools and household utensils with no particular function.

Read the Washington Post's review of the show here.