Ilana Zweschi is an artist working in Seattle, Washington. She attended Skidmore College, graduating summa cum laude in 2011, where she was an Art Major and a Math Minor. In 2014 she earned a Master of Fine Arts in painting from SUNY Albany and received the Departmental Thesis award for her oral defense. She is currently represented by Foster/White Gallery in Seattle and is an Associate Professor at Cornish College of the Arts. Zweschi has exhibited expansively, including a large-scale commission for the Meta Open Arts Program, is part of the Microsoft art collection, and received the DASH artist grant. Notable group shows include: Tiger Strikes Asteroid in New York, Museum of Museums in Seattle, and Out of Sight: A Survey of Contemporary Art in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has been published in New American Paintings, a Youngspace interview, and featured on the opening page of the Culture section of the Seattle Met.
"My work uses hand-written algorithms that transform text documents into colorful oil paintings. I target destructive texts, words that uphold a status quo of objectification within our current society. The raw data of the text acts as the input for the algorithm, which is then run through a series of “if/then” rules I assign based on the structure and grammar of the written words, and receive an output of painterly actions. While the outcome is very abstract, all works start with representational drawings underneath to give the algorithm something organic to react to. One small moment in the drawing can cause a ripple effect of painted marks echoing off of and overlapping each other, sometimes more or less depending on the designated zones in the painting. This process acts to disarm the harmful ideas in the text and to transform the objectification."
Tell us a little about yourself (where you are from) and your background in the arts.
I grew up in Greeley Colorado in my mom’s ceramic studio. She is very handy and designed a commercial building to function as both her studio and our living space. Because of this immersion in the artist lifestyle, I took on the identity of an artist myself very early on. But I was surprised to find that when I got to college, I missed taking regular math classes. I ended up as an Art Major and Math Minor. I now combine art and math, relying heavily on logic and a basic understanding of algorithms to make my paintings.
My first algorithm paintings were made by cannibalizing figurative paintings from my MFA thesis show. I used different rules in the algorithm to ignore, trace or reveal parts of the underlying figure painting. So I ended up with very strange and interesting shapes that were found inside the rendering of the figure. I still need the organic shapes of the figure for my systems to have shapes to build on, so even though my work is abstract, it all starts out figurative.
What kind of work are you currently making?
Currently, my paintings are equal parts beautiful objects and philosophical reflections on society. I use color theory and a deep knowledge of the principles of design to cultivate beauty in my paintings. But they are built on the structure of harmful words, made possible by the use of algorithms. For my most recent body of work, I chose official documents that expose an established belief that certain violent acts are both legal and civil. Each letter in the text gets translated to one brush stroke in the painting, which I mark off on the document once I complete each step. Most of the words in the text then get obscured through this process, silencing the original power that the text held. However, I allow certain keywords to remain exposed. They trigger a focal point in the painting and are the only legible text remaining once the painting is complete. These sporadically visible keywords create a kind of violent poem that can bring the underlying harm of the text to the forefront. My goal in this work is to transform harm into beauty and to empower the viewer to look for where they might see objectification upheld in the status quo.
What is a day like in the studio for you?
I begin all of my studio days with a hot cup of tea and at least 30 minutes of color mixing. The color mixing not only prepares my palette for the day, but also gets me into the right headspace since I believe there is a subtle magic to color that uplifts the ordinary. I have studied and taught the formal understanding of color theory for years, which gives me just enough knowledge to know how impossible color is to fully tame or comprehend. Color is a neurological phenomenon, existing only in our brains. This, plus the fact that our brains interpret colors in ratios rather than absolutes, makes color incredibly slippery. I love watching it slip from my grasp and take on a life of its own.
All of my decision making for the painting happens during an intense couple hours at the beginning while I am writing the algorithm and choosing the color palette. I then have up to 80 hours of painting to execute the plan that requires almost no decisions. The majority of my time is spent making very small and careful lines of paint that slowly accumulate to fill every inch of the large canvas–like patiently weaving one line at a time on a loom until the larger pattern emerges. For these many slow hours, I put on my headphones to listen to a bland and long audio book to settle in.
At the end of the painting when the algorithm has filled the surface, the resulting painting has a strange mix of tension and unexpected rhythms due to the visually unbiased nature of the system. I then go back to making spontaneous creative decisions, scraping and reforming different areas of the work to give it more harmony and control the flow of contrast, allowing a collaboration between my image making and the algorithm that creates something far more interesting that I could do on my own.
What are you looking at right now and/or reading?
I am a teacher so mostly what I am looking at is watching other people learn to paint– which is wonderful for my own studio practice! I get to understand a more universal human approach to painting but also gain insight into what is fresh.
In the studio I have many hours to fill with media to listen to. I generally like to listen to very long and uncomplicated audio books so that I can set a slow but continuous pace of focus while I am working without being totally lost if I tune out for a few minutes. But every once and a while I will use that listening time to learn something: a zoom symposium on critical theory, an art business book, a modern art book, artist talks etc. At that rate, I go through a ton of audio material, so I am always happy to lend a recommendation!
Where can we find more of your work? (ex. website/insta/gallery/upcoming shows)
Website: www.ilanazweschi.com
Instagram: www.instagram/com/ilanazweschi
Gallery website: https://fosterwhite.com/collections/ilana-zweschi
Upcoming shows: Solo show at Foster/White Gallery in Seattle August 1-24 and Seattle Art Fair July 25-28.
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