JENNY ZITO:  Recent Paintings

June 25th - September 10th, 2004

SHAHEEN Modern and Contemporary Art is delighted to announce an exhibition of recent paintings by 26 year-old Cleveland based artist and recent Cleveland Institute of Art graduate Jenny Zito   This will be Zito's first one person gallery exhibition. There will be an opening reception for the artist on Friday, June 25th, from 5:30 - 8:00 p.m.  The exhibition will continue through September 10th.

Based directly on family album photographs, yet imbued with the imaginary, Zito's subtly quirky, small-scale ( -- most would sit comfortably in the palm of your hand) paintings synthesize her ever-evolving investigation of paint's materiality with an ongoing exploration of how one constructs one's identity and notions of family as an adopted child.  While the work specifically traces the artist's own upbringing in a home/family environment with two other adopted children and a biological child, it offers a broader exploration of the connection between childhood memory and experience, and the formation of adult identity and personality.  There exists a certain shiftiness or oscillation between the real and imaginary, the certain and the hypothetical, and the right-at-home and the slightly out-of-place in Zito's imagery.  The artist's skillful, obsessive paint handling, which alternates between flat and thickly impastoed, and ranges from un-modulated to dazzlingly detailed passages, both echoes and enforces this shiftiness.  As such, Zito achieves a sophisticated interweaving of theme, image, execution, and formal/material concern for painting.