American artist and educator Hannah Zimmerman captures the intimacy of her personal studio space. By focusing on inanimate objects as visible traces of time, the viewer is encouraged to stay in the present of her paintings.
Zimmerman’s work is full of intricate patterns, bright colours, and repetitive linework. She paints with gouache, and her subject matter includes her studio companions; plants, the chairs in the space, and her art storage. The chair seems to hold weight in her practice as it is a returning object that the viewer sees again and again. In her piece, Who Am I Other Than The One Who Tells The Same Story 2019, there are depictions of various chair-like provocations. A chair picture on the wall, a sculptural chair sitting on another chair or table, a fragmented frame of a chair, a chair represented from a different angle. Upon viewing this particular piece, the viewer references the work of Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965 – a conceptual work that depicts a chair in three various contexts. She re-creates these studio objects into a variety of forms that question the real and the imaginary. These objects come to life through the conceptual placement and anthropological form she gives them. Zimmerman references Jonas Wood and his plants that hold bright colour and repetitive patterns through her own capturing of her studio plants, bringing originality and colour.
By detailing specific objects over others and placing greater visual weight in particular places of the composition, her work captures how interior spaces hold time and memories. The viewer is invited into Zimmerman’s stunning paintings of her studio to explore.
