Michael Zansky's carved plywood painting series debuts at Herron, headlines the school's first exhibitions of 2018

The Galleries at Herron School of Art and Design are pleased to announce its three winter exhibitions, opening on Jan. 10. The contemporary exhibitions feature works by Michael Zansky, Joell Baxter, and Ronald Hall.

“Deep in the Shallows” brings together 16-by-12 foot, carved plywood paintings and a series of burnt drawings on paper by artist Michael Zansky. Inspired by a range of artistic and historical sources — from Francisco de Goya and Vincent van Gogh to ancient Egyptian and Assyrian art — Zansky creates cryptic, hallucinatory worlds inhabited by fantastical hybrid creatures.

Using both hand and mechanical means, Zansky carves his materials into baroque, enigmatic tableaux whose subjects appear as fragments in a drama from some unidentified and unknowable storyboard. “Deep in the Shallows” marks the first exhibition of Zansky’s plywood series and offers a vivid existential musing on the human condition. 

Also on view in the Galleries at Herron:

  • In the Marsh Gallery: “Joell Baxter: Floating Points” is a site-responsive new work that operates at the intersection of sculpture, painting, and architecture. Featuring a suspended array of colorful screen-printed paper panels, “Floating Points” creates a visually permeable and porous space of constant flux, overlap, and simultaneity. Baxter invites viewers to enter and explore the work’s immersive, chromatic environment.
  • In the Basile Gallery: An exhibition of new paintings and videos by Ronald Hall, who uses traditional artistic genres to create interpretations of historical and contemporary African American themes in order to examine the representation of that experience in art and culture.

All exhibitions run from Jan. 10 through Feb. 24 with a public reception and Christel DeHaan Family Foundation Visiting Artist Lecture by Lori Waxman at Eskenazi Hall, 735 W. New York St., on Jan. 10 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. The Galleries at Herron are free and open to the public Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Wednesdays until 8 p.m.

Parking is available courtesy of The Great Frame Up Indianapolis in the visitor section of the Sports Complex Garage (west of Herron’s Eskenazi Hall), or on the upper floors of the Riverwalk Garage (south of the Sports Complex Garage) until 6 p.m. Park on any floor after 6 p.m. Bring your parking ticket to the Herron galleries for validation.

About Michael Zansky

Zansky received a B.F.A. from the School of Fine Arts and Applied Arts at Boston University. His work is held in major institutional collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Recent solo exhibitions include the Yellowstone Museum of Art, Billings, Mont.; the Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, Fla.; and Stefan Stux Gallery, New York, N.Y. In addition to his art practice, Zansky is a set designer for “Law and Order: SVU” and has worked on such films and television shows as “The Sopranos,” “The First Wives Club,” “Donnie Brasco,” “The Juror,” and “Fatal Attraction.” 

About Lori Waxman

Waxman has written about contemporary art for the Chicago Tribune, Artforum, and other periodicals for the past 18 years. Her books include “Girls! Girls! Girls! in Contemporary Art” and “60 wrd/min art critic,” which was also the name of Waxman’s live performance of art criticism at dOCUMENTA (13). Waxman teaches art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Media Contact

Whitney Yoerger
External Affairs & Content Specialist
317-278-9430
wyoerger@iupui.edu