Altogether Mutable: The Work of Mary Lou Zelazny
A 30 Year Retrospective at the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL.
Publications
Altogether Mutable: The Work of Mary Lou Zelazny.
Published 2009, edition of 500. Writings within the volume include Always the Perfect Non-Sequitur by Allison Peters Quinn and Clea by John Haskell.
"The non-linear exploration of relationships, atmosphere, and humor in Zelazny's work fabricates a narrative in a voice that can never be truly identified or resolved. The story of her paintings slowly unravels as we become engaged by the detailed array of objects, expressions and dramas unfolding on canvas. Zelazny has expanded her visual vocabulary time and time again, adding new imagery in her work; yet the language remains distinctly consistent after all these years. The unpredictable style and illogical content of Mary Lou Zelazny's artwork champions the psychological non-sequiturs of human nature that make life and art intersting." -Allison Peters Quinn
Press
"For nearly thirty years, mixed-media artist Mary Lou Zelazny has consistently woven narrative, humor and sexuality into the painted image through the seamless use of collage and realism. This exhibition presented a comprehensive selection of this important Chicago artist’s oeuvre to date featuring over 70 collaged paintings and paint studies made between 1980 and 2008. Curated by Allison Peters Quinn, Director of Exhibitions at Hyde Park Art Cetner, Altogether Mutable was the first retrospective dedicated to the work of Mary Lou Zelazny."
"Through invention tempered by an alluring observation of shape, pattern, and light, Zelazny remixes reality. While a mastery of paint choreographs her dramas, Zelazny's playfulness with collage casts viewers as improvisers in a performance played out in the mind."
-Dana Boutin.
"The Hyde Park Art Center's stunning retrospective of local painter Mary Lou Zelazny flies the flag of excess-loving styles, presenting a profusion of semifigurative canvases that plays the limpid iridescence of oils against monochromatic collage elements to create lush tableaux…you’ll bask in the radiance of Zelazny's glamorous, fantastical scenes."
-Bert Stabler.
"Zelazny’s forte is indeed her artistic mutability: At the midpoint of her career, she’s pushing the boundaries expanded by her own experimentation."
-Laura Pearson.
"...a woman’s face saturated by a flock of birds, or gold necklaces whirling eel-like, or an erect cock carefully draped with plaid fabric scraps, are like crisp little poetic stanzas unexpectedly plucked from a sink of dirty dishes. Combined, they create a scenic narrative: of love, of solitude, the tragic and the comic."
-Jason Foumberg.
"Mary Lou Zelazny, who has a large midcareer retrospective at the Hyde Park Art Center, has dominated collage in Chicago for nearly 30 years...She is alone here in making collage an ambitious mode of expression."
-Alan G. Artner.
Top 5 Museum Shows Chicago for 2009.
"Set side by side, fantasy and reality result in the kind of ambiguity and intrigue that is consistent across Zelazny’s oeuvre."
-Brandon Hopkins.
For more images of the exhibition, click here.