ZARA FEENEY’S “OVERTURE”

“Overture” is a collection of original works by Los Angeles artist Zara Monet Feeney. Her paintings start with an underlying composite pictogram, alternating between layers of transparent vs. opaque imagery and exploited vs. subdued color relationships. Aiming for the work to fluctuate with intensity in a non-formulaic way, she is fastidious with what is flat and what recedes. Once there is a newly articulated compositional hierarchy, she can extend the reverie into strange unexpected conceptual spaces. By utilizing stratagems of perception and displaying a dramatic dynamic between the subject and the space it occupies, she hopes to set up a curious and reflexive viewing experience.

Instead of disguising the artifice into the interworking of the painted illusion (like a window into another world), her work highlights the painting’s inherent flatness and exaggerates the mere idea of trickery itself. Now the viewer becomes aware that they are looking at something unreal and also becomes conscious of their own fact of seeing— a redoubled vision.