Michael Zwack (1949 – May 5, 2017) was an American artist most often associated with The Pictures Generation. He studied sculpture at

Buffalo State College The State University of New York College at Buffalo (colloquially referred to as Buffalo State College, SUNY Buffalo State, Buffalo State, or simply Buff State) is a public college in Buffalo, New York. It is part of the State University of New ...

and later, with artists such as

Robert Longo Robert Longo (born 1953) is an American artist, filmmaker, photographer and musician. Longo became first well known in the 1980s for his ''Men in the Cities'' drawing and print series, which depict sharply dressed men and women writhing in cont ...

and

Cindy Sherman Cynthia Morris Sherman (born January 19, 1954) is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters. Her breakthrough work is often co ...

, he co-founded the

Hallwalls Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (aka Hallwalls) is a non-profit art organization located in Buffalo, New York. Since 1974, Hallwalls has shown and shows the work of contemporary artists of diverse backgrounds who work in film, video, literatur ...

Gallery, a space run by a non-profit organization of the same name (still open today) in his hometown. Then as did many of his immediate contemporaries he relocated to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

in the midst of its burgeoning art scene. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at such galleries as

Metro Pictures Metro Pictures Corporation was a motion picture production company founded in early 1915 in Jacksonville, Florida. It was a forerunner of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The company produced its films in New York, Los Angeles, and sometimes at leased fac ...

and

Paul Kasmin Gallery The Kasmin Gallery, formerly known as the Paul Kasmin Gallery, is a New York City fine art gallery, founded in SoHo in 1989. History The gallery was founded by its namesake as the Paul Kasmin Gallery in 1989 and was initially housed at 74 Grand S ...

in New York and Thaddaeus Ropac in

Salzburg, Austria Salzburg (, ; literally "Salt-Castle"; bar, Soizbuag, label=Austro-Bavarian) is the fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020, it had a population of 156,872. The town is on the site of the Roman settlement of ''Iuvavum''. Salzburg was founded ...

and was included in The Pictures Generation exhibition in 2009 at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 100 ...

curated by Douglas Eklund. Writing in the February 1996 edition of

Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ x 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably ...

, Rosetta Brooks said of his exhibition at Thomas Soloman's Garage:

"Part of a generation of artists in the early '80s who appropriated mass media imagery, Zwack reconsiders the impact of the photographic on our way of seeing. He mines the photograph's ability to capture the fugitive, to reveal the unexpected, and to create a reverberative depth, celebrating the slow metamorphic quality of the natural world and our apprehension of it. For him, the image is a cipher of the archetypal, a vessel that has the power to hold echoes of an ancestral voice. Echoing the floating, phenomenal worlds that characterize the Japanese painting tradition, Zwack's work encourages a contemplative, almost trancelike relationship to the phenomenal world"...

Zwack died in New York City on May 5, 2017 due to

lung cancer Lung cancer, also known as lung carcinoma (since about 98–99% of all lung cancers are carcinomas), is a malignant lung tumor characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. Lung carcinomas derive from transformed, malign ...

. He was 67.

References

External links

Audio tour transcript for ''The Pictures Generation'' at the Met

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zwack, Michael 1949 births 2017 deaths American contemporary artists Deaths from lung cancer in New York (state)