FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

JOHN DIGBY: New Work

maritta tapanainen: collages

March 17 – April 16, 2005

PAVEL ZOUBOK GALLERY is pleased to announce the opening of two solo exhibitions by JOHN DIGBY and MARITTA TAPANAINEN. Please join us for the opening reception on Thursday, March 17, from 6-8pm, or during the run of the exhibition, which continues through April 16. The gallery is located at: 533 West 23rd Street (between 10th & 11th Avenues)

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10am-6pm

Using a painstakingly delicate process of paper inlay, JOHN DIGBY's new work continues the artist's decades-long exploration into the expressive range of black and white. The current exhibition includes four new and recent series that draw their inspiration from sources both literary and visual in nature. The series Songs to the Sirens, inspired by Homer's Odyssey, is a visual meditation on the legend of the sirens. The collages are delicately frilled abstractions that appear to float effortlessly in space, their fluid forms derived from a genus of sea snails called Nudibranchs. In the series Spirits of the Pinnacles, named for the bizarre rock formations found on the shores of the Indian Ocean in coastal Australia, organic forms weave seamlessly in and around each other to create an abstract world reminiscent of Yves Tanguy's biomorphic environments. Other works include a series of inlaid collages based on the writings of Raphael Alberti and John Keats. The common denominator in Digby's new work is a continued interest in the relationship between visual form and poetic expression. John Digby's contribution to the field of contemporary collage is also distinguished by his pioneering use of archival methods and materials in collage construction and the publication of groundbreaking texts on the subject in collaboration with his wife Dr. Joan Digby. The Digbys' 1985 book The Collage Handbook (Thames & Hudson) remains an essential text on collagists working in the postwar period.

In the meticulously composed collages of Finnish-born MARITTA TAPANAINEN, vestiges of delicate contours, derived from excised fragments of scientific, botanical and mechanical illustration, trace lifelines with organic origins. The linear complexities of her collages assume the qualities of drawing, suspended against backdrops of abstract planes that recall the rhythmic structures of Analytic Cubism. Accumulated fragments of pods, cells, tendrils and anatomical details coalesce with these to form an intricately woven otherworldliness. Small evidences of civilization revealed in structural and mechanical artifacts are overwhelmed by this proliferating growth infused with the interconnectedness-of-all-things, the tenacity of existence, and its perpetual renewal. Quirky and fragile, her collages employ a somber palette of black, white and sepia tones. Her choice of aged, worn paper imbues the work with a sense of both history and detached timelessness and lies at the heart of an obsessive process of collecting that has stretched over some thirty years. Maritta Tapanainen has exhibited extensively in Los Angeles and in Japan . This is her first solo exhibition in New York .

For additional information and images please contact Julie Brunner Cross at (212) 675 7490 or [email protected]