GALLERY LINKS
INTERVIEWS + FEATURES
Feature in Seattle Met
Interview with Cara Roberts Podcast
Interview with Brush Work Podcast
ARTIST STATEMENT
My paintings involve math and philosophical activism. Through hand-written algorithms, I am able to transform any text document into colorful oil paintings. I target destructive texts, words that uphold a status quo of objectification within our current society. The raw data of the text acts as the input for the algorithm, which is then run through a series of “if/then” rules I assign based on the structure and grammar of the written words, and receive an output of painterly actions. While the outcome is very abstract, all works start with representational drawings underneath to give the algorithm something organic to react to. One small moment in the drawing can cause a ripple effect of painted marks echoing off of and overlapping each other, sometimes more or less depending on the designated zones in the painting. This process acts to disarm the harmful results of the text and to transform the objectification.
BIO:
Ilana Zweschi is an artist working in Seattle, Washington. She attended Skidmore College, graduating summa cum laude in 2011, where she was an Art Major and a Mathematics Minor. In 2014 she earned a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the State University of New York at Albany and received the Departmental Thesis award for her oral defense. She is currently represented by Foster/White Gallery in Seattle and is an instructor at Cornish College of the Arts. Zweschi has exhibited expansively, recently completing a large scale commission for the Facebook Open Arts Program, is part of the Microsoft art collection, and received the DASH artist grant for 2022. Notable group shows include: Tiger Strikes Asteroid in New York, Museum of Museums in Seattle, and Out of Sight: A Survey of Contemporary Art in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has been published in the No. 145 Pacific Coast Issue of New American Paintings, a Youngspace interview, and featured on the opening page of the Culture section of the Seattle Met in 2020.
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