My paintings have always been produced and conceptualized through reading and taking notes, and no visual source material is utilized. My most recent body of work focuses in part on the physicality of language - the idea of text and written information made into architectural/sculptural bodies. This work sets up contexts to consider the many ways in which language and architecture define and prescribe our psychological and physical experience. My research collapses and funnels current socio-political and contemporary realities through diverse moments in history and the passage of paint.
In a very tangible way all history is manufactured. My interest lies in the relationship between the recording of history as the process of accumulation, omission, and revision of information, and the process and methodologies of thinking through painting itself. My canvasses materialize through the extensive manipulation of the paint and, inherently, the process is akin to notions concerning the various ways history itself is “worked out”. The paintings in many ways are unique documents in themselves, reflections or memories on and of their own philosophical fabrication and textured provenance. I would consider painting as writing.
Etienne Zack (born 1976 in Montreal, Canada) is a Canadian artist based in Los Angeles. Zack studied at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver and Concordia University in Montreal. Zack’s solo exhibitions include the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, Montreal, Canada; Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway; Thomas Dane Gallery, London, England; Marina-Miranda, Madrid, Spain; Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, Canada; Blackwood Gallery at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, Canada and Equinox Gallery, Vancouver, Canada. Notable group exhibitions include: East International 2004 (selectors: Neo Rauch and Harry Gerb Lybke), Norwich, England; Up The Walls at The Model Museum, Sligo, Ireland; Oh, Canada, Mass. MoCA, North Adams, USA; No Place As Home: New Art From Vancouver at Projektraum Viktor Bucher, Vienna, Austria; Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles, USA; In a Certain Place at Nicole Klagsbrun, New York, United States; 2010 Canadian Biennial, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada; Paint (2006- catalogue), Art from the Audain Collection: Shore, Forest and Beyond (2011- catalogue), Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada; 2008 Quebec Triennial, Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, Montreal, Canada.
Etienne Zack is collected by institutions and museums including the National Gallery of Canada collection, Art Bank of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, Montreal Fine Arts Museum, Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art (Canada), National Fine Arts Museum of Quebec, Surrey Art Gallery, Glenbow Museum, City of Montréal, Zabludowicz Collection (London, England) and The Model Museum (Sligo, Ireland). His work can also be found in numerous corporate and private collections in the United States, Europe, Scandinavia, Ireland, the UK and across Canada.