Claire Zakiewicz is an artist working in London and New York. Named in the New York's top ten artists list in Art511 magazine, 2018, her practice examines the physical and metaphorical relationships between sound and painting. She explores how this research can be applied within the context of performance, painting, drawing, music, photography, installation and video projections.
As a performance painter, my work examines relationships between sound and painting and the aesthetics of improvisation. Some of these relationships are physical, immediate and felt, while others are reflective, considered or based on conceptual metaphor. My practice incorporates acting and dance techniques such as Meisner and Contact Improvisation to explore qualities of mark-making through gestural, automatic, accidental and incidental marking interspersed with contemplative periods of judgement, editing and contextualisation.
I’m interested in the vibrancy, vitality and history of places, bodies and objects and the significance of human creativity in the post human age. My work is an exercise in listening and looking more deeply with the whole body and a meditation on solitude and connection. I am interested in how the digital turn has impacted how we see and how we paint. I explore what it is to draw from memory, the imagination, concepts, prescribed patterns and intuitive processes. My own experience of the work is often transformative by allowing me to explore cognitive processes that underlie our emotional and conceptual relationship with the arts.
Abstract and figurative painting is the central context within which I explore these questions but I also play saxophone, produce electronic music, videos, projections, installations, photographic works and performances that examine the complexities of exchange and attunement. My exhibitions often include live painting installations, live dance and music performances as well as editions, paintings of all sizes and projections.