GERLIND ZEILNER
OPEN END
January 16 ­– February 27, 2021

Nino Mier Gallery is thrilled to announce its first solo exhibition with Austrian artist Gerlind Zeilner. The exhibition, Open end, will be on view in Los Angeles from January 16th to February 27th, 2021.

Approaching abstract figuration with a practice firmly rooted in documenting quotidian observations of metropolitan life and her own personal space, Zeilner’s drawings and paintings reflect both the artist’s external reality and internal psyche. Beginning with hand-drawn studies, Zeilner records her visual impressions as she navigates daily life while paying careful attention to the aesthetics of street activity, infrastructure, and social interactions in bars and cafes. 

Already removed from their original context, Zeilner further liberates her gathered observations from their rigid material conventions in her painting studio where abstracted forms, oscillating between exterior and interior source material, merge to achieve images of altered realities. Underscoring this transformative process, the imagery often purposefully strays from specificity regarding exact locations or identities. Tracing Zeilner’s shifting perspectives and demonstrating the flexible relationship between objects and their environment, lines from the outside world coalesce with shapes observed from the interior of the studio. The forms of chairs, bottles, and plants inside the studio exert their influence on studies of the outer world and establish newly imagined settings.

Subverting cliched imagery and attitudes in the canon of art history established by paintings of café culture and social scenes traditionally dominated by masculinity, Zeilner restages these spaces as saloons filled with heroic and vibrant, Western-clad cowgirls. Modeled after women she admires, particularly other artists, writers, and intellectuals, Zeilner’s cowgirls represent a spirit of rebellion and gritty truthfulness absent of machismo.  

Turning perspectives onto more personal environments, Zeilner’s expressive brushwork outlines the nuanced forms of seemingly banal objects, such as sugar packets or cigarettes, that despite making up the fabric of most daily routines, often go unnoticed until they are no longer available. Delineating these everyday objects in simple, colorful lines, Zeilner further emphasizes their shapes by rendering the remaining composition as undefined white space.

Gerlind Zeilner (b. 1971 in Mödling, Austria; lives and works in Vienna, Austria) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Zeilner’s work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien, Graz; Galerie Donopoulos International Fine Arts, Thessaloniki, Greece; and Tresor, Kunstforum der Bank Austria, Vienna. Zeilner’s work will also be included an upcoming group exhibition at Kunstraum Engländerbau, Vaduz, Liechtenstein, and has been included in exhibitions at Kunstraum am Schauplatz, Vienna; and Albertina, Vienna.