ZEB ONE *1982

​

is another of the painters to have crossed the boundary between the street and the gallery scene, part of a growing infiltration of the language of graffiti into the space of unadorned free art.

While his work is loosely tied to the tradition of geometric abstraction, ZEB ONE remains a painter in terms of “themes”. He remains uniquely fascinated by and devoted to letters, though does not perceive them symbolically. For him letters are not a cryptographic technique, nor does he compose words from them. He focuses primarily on their shape, colour and mutual relationships. Most of his paintings are devoted to a single character, while the approach and his priorities change over time.

The paintings are characterised by a flat, purist, almost geometric style. The canvasses were first dominated by black, later featuring a muted, non-contrasting colour scheme of refracted shades. In a sense, ZEB ONE is a systematic minimalist. His works are always preceded by preparatory sketches.  He is well aware of the stiff “reservedness” of first attempts within the context of a series and the gradual liberation of expression. The fact that he does not avoid experimentation, which is a natural part of his creative thinking, but conducts it under completely rational and controlled conditions, means that the creation of his paintings can be compared to laboratory work.

While the internal structure of his paintings don’t undergo radical development, the change is evident when they’re placed side by side. More than anything, they resemble successive states of an only partially predictable mathematical formula, the laws and generalising principles of which can be safely recognised and named only by a few.