The paintings of Zach Harris (b. 1976, Santa Rosa, California) are amalgams of mystical imagery, illusionistic patterning, and intricate figuration. They are among the most original objects produced under the rubric of contemporary painting. Harris develops intimate vignettes into elaborately sculpted and refined frameworks, simultaneously focusing the viewer’s attention and expanding it over a multi-dimensional plane. Recalling cosmological diagrams and visionary folk art, as well as a diversity of Eastern and Western art-historical traditions from devotional icons to Color Field, Harris’s constructions are born of the sustained attention one might associate with medieval illuminators. Each constitutes an entire cosmology, complete with recurring characters (both earthly and divine) and radical ideas about the action of gravity, light and time. As Harris has remarked, “Within a single small shape one can detect worlds within worlds where logic fields resolve and contrast endlessly with one another.”

Zach Harris has presented solo exhibitions at David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles (2019 and 2013); Perrotin (2020, New York; 2017, Paris); and Max Protetch Gallery, New York (2009). Group exhibitions include Unorthodox, Jewish Museum, New York (2016); Left Coast: Recent Acquisitions of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California (2014); Tapping the Third Realm, Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design, and Laband Art Gallery, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles (2013); and Made in L.A. 2012, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. His work is in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey; and Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California. Harris lives and works in Los Angeles.