OUT OF CONTEXT

Chinatown Soup is delighted to present Out of Context, an exhibition of mixed media paintings and tribute by Maria Zorn. Please join us for a celebratory reception on Wednesday, July 24 from 7-9pm. Out of Context is Maria’s solo debut and on view from July 23, 2019.

In this body of work, Maria has created abstract interpretations of word groupings collected from:

• the postcards of strangers

• her brother’s journals

• street signs in Mississippi

• a storage container label

• Indonesian graffitti

She uses ordinary, arbitrary, and prosaic phrases to inspire images, imagined dialogues, and stories. As an artist and individual, Maria seeks to transmute the mundane into a personal narrative with universal resonance. This practice helps her feel grounded and alive, while providing the perfect excuse to take a hammer or pair of scissors to objects around her home as a means of texturizing. She would not make a good roommate for this reason.

Maria primarily uses acrylic paint and found objects, including but not limited to:

• broken glass

• packaging from groceries, art supplies, cat food

• Post-it Notes

• confetti

• spilled wine

Creating art without a destination in mind, Maria’s process is spontaneous, instinctive, unfussy, and free. She allows each stroke of her brush to inspire and inform the next without overthinking it. Maria loves to juxtapose geometric shapes and hard edges with:

• exposed canvas

• visible brush strokes

• messiness, imperfection

• coloring outside the lines

She constantly tries new methods of creating and often fails, especially when attempting to be more minimalistic. For this reason, all of her exhibited pieces contain between two to eleven other projects whose history is sealed under their topmost layers. She considers all of her artwork “mostly finished.”

Maria Zorn is a mixed media artist living in Colorado with her 16 year-old cat named Dizzy. She likes:

• picking paint from under her nails

• elderly people who are open to trying new cuisines

• the idea, not the practice, of making her own candles

• traveling, reading, hiking, cooking, yoga, and drinking a lot of wine while doing all aforementioned activities

• not waiting in line

• eating pickles so voraciously that she very well may incur lasting damaging health effects

Maria is supremely inspired by her brother Tomm, who was her most fervent supporter and ignited her creative spirit forever ago. She is eternally grateful to Michelle, without whom she may never have been galvanized to paint again after the loss of her brother. July 24 would have been Tomm’s 28th birthday, and we intend to celebrate as he would have desired.