Michael Zahn

Stellar, 2005

Since 2004 I have been working on a suite of works that was conceived as a meditation on the recent technological past, like the DOS screen of the early computer era. The painting Stellar embodies much of this intention. Aside from its color, which is finely tuned, and the pun in the title (referring to the small constellation of asterisks on its plane, but also to the cartoon working-class pronunciation of the proper name ‘stella’), it broke the static minimalism of some earlier grid-based drawings, which were the initial model for the black paintings. The green asterisks have a peculiar status on the black field. Sometimes I see this painting as analogous to Olivier Mosset’s circle paintings, in that it’s a particularly satisfying composition that I could repeat well into the near future, much in the same way I’ll continue to type in a password to access my e-mail or to withdraw loot from the bank. The sequence of characters establishes an identity of a sort, and is almost a surrogate signature. An asterisk is also used as a footnoting device, and I like the fact that my black paintings could be seen as footnotes to the heroic abstract painting that preceded them in art history. (M.Z.)