My work is a passionate search for form
Informal Intro: Shannon Zwicker
In this second Informal Intro Shannon is giving us some insights into the works she showed as part of the group exhibition Becoming Habits: Chapter 1. This series is for you to explore the artist's works in an easy, uncomplicated way. In contrast to the intimidating words and sentences we, the art-world, love to use.
Perhaps it is the closest we come, in times of Covid, to replicating meeting the artist at an opening night and asking a few questions about the exhibited works.
1. About me
Shannon Zwicker (*1992) grew up in Graubünden (CH), after graduating from her baccalaureate she completed the foundation course in Design & Art in Lucerne. She continued her studies at the Hochschule Lucerne and participated in an exchange semester at the University of Bremen in 2013 where she studied under Stephan Baumkötter.
After receiving her BA in 2016 she continued to work as an artist in Lucerne and took part in a three month residency programme in Genua, organised by the city of Lucerne. Starting from autumn 2020 Zwicker is completing her MA Fine Arts at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste.
Zwicker has exhibited widely in Switzerland including at the Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur, S11 Solothurn, Benzeholz Raum für aktuelle Kunst, Meggen.
2. General
I understand my work as a passionate search for form. I mainly deal with the media of drawing and painting. Photographs serve me as reference points and research tools. The direct work on the painting is very important to me, the dialogue between what happens on the painting surface and me as an artist, who constantly reacts to it.
I enjoy letting structures and forms grow, to relate surfaces and lines to each other, to make them disappear and then bring single elements back to the surface again. In this way, openings are created that refer to a hidden interior. I mix different techniques of painting and drawing, I work with oil crayons, watercolour, acrylic and spray paint. My colour spectrum is often oriented within a tonality of the flesh, as used to depict naked human body parts, combined with complementary and gaudy contrasting colours. The result is a gestural painting populated by fluid forms that are neither entirely abstract nor visibly figurative. My work is driven by a basic interest in corporeality and related questions of volume, surface, form and colour. They are based on a deep engagement with current debates about body norms, gender, desire, but also with pop culture and feminism. At the same time, they have an inherent reflexive character, which is based on the attempt to capture one's own body awareness. The works tell of longing and desire, of sensuality and touch.
A PDF of Shannon Zwicker can be found Here (Text in German)
Trick of the light, oil on canvas, 2020
150x100 cm
Dreaming of flying peaches, oil on canvas, 2020
150x100 cm