EXHIBITION RECORD

Tim Zuck
Learning to Talk

Saturday, October 5, 2002 through Sunday, December 1, 2002

Leo Steinberg in a lecture once suggested that in order to comprehend with specificity the intended message of an art work you must always pay meticulous attention to the question: “In what direction is the action occurring?” Let me say, Tim Zuck is now, and has been since the early seventies, a fully mature accomplished artist. He is not in the process of learning to talk; he is talking. The question more properly is whether or not anyone is listening? In fact are we willing to, are we capable of listening? It has been the art audience that has perhaps lost the capacity to talk, lost the ability to listen to art’s song, specifically the attributes and pleasures of painting. We are not watching him learning to talk, instead, through his work we are learning to listen. Some will not be able to listen to what he is currently saying or even willing to exert the effort to comprehend the language he is speaking. Naturalistic representation, idiosyncratic narratives won’t cut it, that is, unless it can be demonstrated through lineage and blood lines to be irrefutably linked to a glorious, intellectually acceptable art historical past: the domain of words meaning and argument rather than subjective feeling.

Jeffrey Spalding
Director
The Appleton Museum of Art