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Bryan Zanisnik is a contemporary artist working in video, performance, photography, and installation. Zanisnik's multidisciplinary practice uses objects en masse to explore American culture, Freudian psychology, and familial relationships. His site-specific installations have addressed diverse subjects, including a crumbling library of Philip Roth novels, an entropic swamp littered with Northern New Jersey waste, and an Americana museum reconstructed in Guangzhou, China. Critic David Duncan commented that Zanisnik "comical impartation of dubious history and catalogue of trivial possessions sidestep sentimentality while conveying a fascination with the type of inherited narrative that gets passed down in close-knit families."
In the spring of 2012 Zanisnik was involved in a legal battle with Philip Roth over the use of Roth's ''The Great American Novel'' in his performance at the Abrons Arts Center. According to ''Artnet'' magazine, "the law firm representing author Philip Roth personally served performance artist Bryan Zanisnik with a cease and desist letter at the Abrons Arts Center on New York's Lower East Side, where Zanisnik was in the midst of staging Every Inch a Man, a performance that involves locking himself inside a Plexiglass case while he silently reads Roth's ''The Great American Novel'' and a fan blows old baseball cards and money into the air around him."
Since 2002 Zanisnik has photographed and written about the Meadowlands, a polluted swamp in northern New Jersey. Focused on the objects discarded within the landscape, Zanisnik was known to have had encounters with local police, environmental scientists, hobo encampments, and homeland security. Critic Christine Smallwood said Zanisnik's "photo essay in Triple Canopy 'Beyond Passaic' documents the author's illegal wanderings in New Jersey's heavily polluted and largely neglected Meadowlands. Inspired by Robert Smithson, himself famously inspired by the region, Zanisnik walks abandoned train tracks, finds discarded objects, and discovers a hobo encampment under a bridge. While Smithson was drawn to 'geology and rock quarries, monumental vacancies and ruins in reverse', Zanisnik is interested in the legal ambiguity of the space, its toxicity, and the people living on its waste."Christine Smallwood, "Return to the Meadowlands", Triple Canopy, February 2, 2012
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Bryan Zanisnik Studio WebsiteBryan Zanisnik, New York Close Up - Art:21RAIR: Bryan Zanisnik / Made in Philadelphia (1987) - Institute of Contemporary ArtBryan Zanisnik in Saturday Session - MoMA PS1Beyond Passaic: A Meadowlands Photo Essay - Triple CanopyArtist-in-Residence - Smack Mellon Artist Studio ResidencyBryan Zanisnik - Bomb MagazineBaseball Card as Madeleine - Triple CanopyBryan Zanisnik at Sunday L.E.S. - Art in America
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zanisnik, Bryan American video artists 1979 births Hunter College alumni Artists from New York (state) Artists from New Jersey Living people American performance artists
Bryan Zanisnik is a contemporary artist working in video, performance, photography, and installation. Zanisnik's multidisciplinary practice uses objects en masse to explore American culture, Freudian psychology, and familial relationships. His site-specific installations have addressed diverse subjects, including a crumbling library of Philip Roth novels, an entropic swamp littered with Northern New Jersey waste, and an Americana museum reconstructed in Guangzhou, China. Critic David Duncan commented that Zanisnik "comical impartation of dubious history and catalogue of trivial possessions sidestep sentimentality while conveying a fascination with the type of inherited narrative that gets passed down in close-knit families."
In the spring of 2012 Zanisnik was involved in a legal battle with Philip Roth over the use of Roth's ''The Great American Novel'' in his performance at the Abrons Arts Center. According to ''Artnet'' magazine, "the law firm representing author Philip Roth personally served performance artist Bryan Zanisnik with a cease and desist letter at the Abrons Arts Center on New York's Lower East Side, where Zanisnik was in the midst of staging Every Inch a Man, a performance that involves locking himself inside a Plexiglass case while he silently reads Roth's ''The Great American Novel'' and a fan blows old baseball cards and money into the air around him."
Since 2002 Zanisnik has photographed and written about the Meadowlands, a polluted swamp in northern New Jersey. Focused on the objects discarded within the landscape, Zanisnik was known to have had encounters with local police, environmental scientists, hobo encampments, and homeland security. Critic Christine Smallwood said Zanisnik's "photo essay in Triple Canopy 'Beyond Passaic' documents the author's illegal wanderings in New Jersey's heavily polluted and largely neglected Meadowlands. Inspired by Robert Smithson, himself famously inspired by the region, Zanisnik walks abandoned train tracks, finds discarded objects, and discovers a hobo encampment under a bridge. While Smithson was drawn to 'geology and rock quarries, monumental vacancies and ruins in reverse', Zanisnik is interested in the legal ambiguity of the space, its toxicity, and the people living on its waste."/ref>
Personal life and education
Zanisnik was born in Union, New Jersey in 1979. He received a B.A. from Drew University and an M.F.A. fromHunter College
Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admi ...
. He has completed residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program, the Smack Mellon
Smack Mellon is a non-profit arts organization located at 92 Plymouth Street, in Dumbo, Brooklyn. Smack Mellon supports emerging, under-recognized mid-career, and women artists through a highly regarded exhibition program, competitive studio re ...
Artist Studio Program, the MacDowell Colony, the Art Omi
Art Omi, formerly Omi International Arts Center, is a non-profit international arts organization located in Columbia County, New York, Columbia County in Ghent, New York. The organization provides Artist-in-residence, residencies for writers, art ...
International Artists Residency, and the Guangdong Times Museum in Guangzhou, China.
He is married to Anna Kaschel, formerly a fashion designer
Fashion is a form of self-expression and autonomy at a particular period and place and in a specific context, of clothing, footwear, lifestyle, accessories, makeup, hairstyle, and body posture. The term implies a look defined by the fashion in ...
at H&M. She is German; they met at a New Year's Eve party
In the Gregorian calendar, New Year's Eve, also known as Old Year's Day or Saint Sylvester's Day in many countries, is the evening or the entire day of the December 31, last day of the year, on 31 December. The last day of the year is commonly ...
in Brooklyn in 2014.
Exhibitions
He has exhibited and performed in New York at MoMA PS1, SculptureCenter and the Queens Museum of Art; in Philadelphia at the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Fabric Workshop and Museum; in Miami at the De La Cruz Collection; in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Photography; in Los Angeles at LAXART; and internationally at the Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Vienna and the Futura Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague. Zanisnik’s work has been reviewed in '' The New York Times'',Art in America
''Art in America'' is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world in the United States, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It i ...
, Artforum, and ARTnews, amongst others. He is included in Art:21's documentary series New York Close Up and is a contributing writer at Triple Canopy.
References
External links
Bryan Zanisnik Studio Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zanisnik, Bryan American video artists 1979 births Hunter College alumni Artists from New York (state) Artists from New Jersey Living people American performance artists