Jane Zweibel at 55 Mercer - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

In Jane Zweibel's new exhibition, "Self-Portraits in the Third Person" a place of eight paintings titled Personal consequences introduced her manner and intentions. The small oils, which range in size from 8 by means of 10 inches to about twice as large, depict portions of a woman's anatomy with ornaments. There is a neck with a necklace, a wrist with a bracelet, an ear with an earring, a hand with a ring and a Bandaid. That last little detail sum ups the tale: Zweibel examines existence with an acute faculty of perception of self and a dazzling appreciation of absurdity. This is not victim art.

Zweibel direct the eyes carefully at all sorts of female accoutrements. She tallies fragrance bottle in the eight 6-by-6-inch oil-on-masonite paintings collectively titled Bodily Charms. She lines up four versions of a face differently decorated in Make-up Artist (oil upon mirror, of course). She paints four life-size dresse upon unstretched, shaped canvases for next to the first Skins. These two long garments and sum of two units short ones are so varied in manner of writing that they could suit entirely different personalities or ages. This piece grapples with the question of identity from one side its ironic tile and also end the tabs on the gown that make them direct the eye like grown-up versions of paper-doll clothes.

The five large canvases of Misfits (the biggest is 109 through 55 inches) approach slapstick in their display of a rather fat woman in a bra and bikini underpants struggling into or on the outside of a pair of pantyhose, and also putting a pair above her head. The woman's complete seriousness saves the work from silliness. In fact, beneath its humor there is something disquieting about the awkwardness, discomfort and desperation that are implicit in her contortions. A similar ambivalence characterizes private room Skeletons, a 68-by-214-inch triptych that presents three views of a dark cabinet occupied only by white plastic hangers. At left greatest in quantity of the hangers are lined up neatly upon the closet pole, but in the middle panel they twist and turn round and detach themselves, accumulating in a tangled pile upon the floor. In the right view the retiring-room seems occupied by spirits of hangers that pass [i]or[/i] part of to the other the walls, while one, humanlike, cowers in a corner. The dark emptiness of the cabinet could connote death, given the absence of the clothing that would attest to someone's existence. on the other hand the scene is equally a Zweibellian observation that particulars have a life of their own

Zweibel's paintings likewise have a life of their own: they beat with vitality, because of their bring under rules and because the loose, broad brushstrokes give the images warmth and nearness There's no slick perfection here, any more than there is in the mix of awkwardness and bliss we live each day.

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