Mercer County College To Show Works Of Zahar Vaks

MERCER COUNTY, NJ — The Gallery at Mercer County Community College’s latest exhibition offers a multi-sensory trifecta of olfactory, tactile and visual pleasure.

“Searching for the Cultural Plumb Bob” featuring the works of Uzbekistan native Zahar Vaks will be on display from Jan. 27 through March 5, the college announced.

The public is invited to “A Conversation With Artist Zahar Vaks” on Feb. 5 noon to 1:30 p.m. in the Communications Building, Room CM107 on MCCC's West Windsor Campus. A community reception with the artist will be held from 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. the same day in The Gallery.

Vaks is a visual artist born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and living in Brooklyn, N.Y. His paintings, drawings and structures are material narratives actualized by a multi-sensory approach. The olfactory and tactile elements of his work are just as important as the visual.

His works address the perception of time through the marinating of oil, tree sap balsams and pigments with ingredients used in cooking, such as turmeric. Vaks applies his ingredients to various surfaces such as linen, canvas, silk screens, vinyl, drywall and iPhones.

“Zahar Vaks explores a conversation between the ancient and the contemporary,” Gallery Director Alice K. Thompson said. “Vaks’ paintings depict spaces — whether scenes from memory or the sensory recalls of a corporeal experience. The passage of time in a painting can be specific or elusive or even completely timeless. A quick, bold gesture can dissolve into a slow and subtle remnant.”

The surfaces of Vaks’ pieces are remarkably varied. Paintings are stretched or left loose with surfaces fused. A piece of organza painted with fabric dye may be layered over velvet. The fusion of these layers creates a new kind of skin that is not easily identifiable and allows for more possibilities.

Vaks earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Tyler School of Art, and a Master of Fine Arts from Ohio State University. His work has been featured in New York, Philadelphia, Columbus, Las Vegas, Houston, Vienna and on the island of Svalbard in Norway.

This past summer he was invited to participate in the Rauschenberg Residency. He attended the Galveston Artist Residency from 2012-13. He is a member of the Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run curatorial collective and exhibition space in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

More about Zahar Vaks’ work can be found at http://www.zaharvaks.com.