Jupiter will showcase work by Joe Zucker at Independent 20th Century this year.
In her New York Times review of a trio of Zucker exhibitions in New York in 2003–2004, Roberta Smith—the most steadfast champion of his work over the breadth of his career—said that “Mr. Zucker occupies an important cusp between modern and postmodern, between Roy Lichtenstein and Jeff Koons. In the catalog to the Gavin Brown show [Ravenna, 2003] the writer Klaus Kertess aptly links him to Robert Ryman and Sigmar Polke.” Even in productive dialogue with the achievements of such a spot-on roster, over the more than sixty years of his enterprise, Zucker’s work never wavered from his deeply-felt interrogations of what a painting was, or could be. His statement for the 1978 New Image Painting at the Whitney succinctly made his point: “My selection of subject matter in relation to kinds of surfaces is important. Pictorial content becomes an iconography to discuss the topography of the painting.”
Zucker received his BFA and MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in 1964 and 1966, respectively. He remained very clear in his discussions of his work that studying within one of the world’s best museums anchored his relentless material experimentation and conceptual integrity. Moving to New York not long after, he became a fixture of the New York art scene, and his work soon caught the eye of some of the city’s most influential galleries, starting with Klauss Kertess and Jeff Byars’s Bykert Gallery.
In a time of digital consumption and “content creation,” Zucker’s work—meticulously constructed and handmade, yet resistant to superficial claims of expression—reasserts with neither nostalgia nor apology the staying power of tactility and physical presence. His work re-emerges newly vital today, inviting viewers to consider the meaning embedded in process itself—as well as the political charge inherent in the very act of artistic creation.
September 4-7, 2025
The Battery Maritime Building at Cipriani South Street | Booth E3
10 South Street
New York, NY 10004
Dates:
September 4–7, 2025
Hours:
September 4, 2025 | 11 AM – 8 PM (By Invitation), 5 PM – 8 PM (Vernissage)
September 5, 2025 | 11 AM – 7 PM
September 6, 2025 | 11 AM – 7 PM
September 7, 2025 | 11 AM – 6 PM