Aelx Zecca Opening At Gallery 16 In Their New Location June 16, 2006

Gallery 16 is pleased to present the work of Alex Zecca in his second solo exhibition with the gallery.

Alex Zecca’s activity as an artist has been a focused, process oriented exploration of painting, paint making, and most recently drawing. Zecca’s drawings are the focus of this inaugural exhibition at Gallery 16’s new location, 501 Third Street in San Francisco. The new drawings are the result of his obsessive and rigid handmade action. The drawings are time-intensive, process-oriented works made through a laborious process of accumulating steady inked lines. These new images follow concerns in Zecca’s work that take a cue from process art, design and minimalism.

These works on paper are a direct offshoot of the artist’s interest in works that require an almost meditative discipline. His painting process separates him from most of his contemporaries, as he makes his paints from scratch much the same way they were made in the 1600s. He uses rare earths, heavy metals, and other exotic materials to create the paint that becomes the raw material of his work. The paintings, while constructed using antiquated methods, are contemporary meditations on the nature of paint itself. These works are not illusions created by an artist with paint, but paint itself. His surfaces are created by chemical reactions, sanding, drawing, and reapplication of raw pigments in later upon layer. Zecca’s work minimizes form in order to emphasize the inherent beauty and properties of these materials.

Alex Zecca studied art in Italy and at CCA before getting his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1994.

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