Nino Mier Gallery is pleased to present Paintings for Children, the gallery’s second solo exhibition with New York based artist, Zak Kitnick. The exhibition’s opening will be celebrated with two family-friendly events on Saturday, March 7 and Sunday, March 8 from 10AM - 3PM at our SoHo gallery.
Inspired by a set of Marimekko bed sheets the artist owned as a child and revisited as a new father, the paintings depict cars, trucks, and buses. Originally conceived as paintings for his daughter’s bedroom, they became the basis for a sustained series.
The exhibition’s title is borrowed from Andy Warhol’s 1984 exhibition of the same name, held at Bruno Bischofsberger Gallery in the year Kitnick was born. Warhol’s installation featured paintings of toys hung at the eye-level of elementary-aged children, and adult visitors unaccompanied by children were required to pay admission. Kitnick’s exhibition extends this logic through approximately one hundred small paintings installed at the heights of two, three, and four-year-old children. A portion of all sales will be donated to Wide Rainbow, a New York City–based after-school arts program for children.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication with a new essay by Hannah Pivo, a historian of art and design.
Born in Los Angeles, CA in 1984, Zak Kitnick currently lives and works in New York, NY. Recent solo exhibitions include The Weather, Clearing, New York (2022); Shapes, Nino Mier, Los Angeles (2021); 12 Grapes, Clearing, Brussels (2019); Doubles, Clearing, New York (2018); and Craftsman by Sears at Kmart, Ribordy Contemporary, Geneva (2018). Kitnick has been included in significant group exhibitions at MoMA PS1, New York; Queens Museum of Art, New York; and The Power Station, Dallas. The artist’s work belongs to the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; MAMCO Genève, Switzerland; Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; and Collezione Giancarlo e Danna Olgiati, Lugano, among others.