In Deborah Zlotsky’s paintings, the rigor of shapes and perspectival planes combine with the unruliness of drips, stains, and abrasions, often inflected with trompe l'oeil props and supports. She explores the friction between intention and coincidence through cycles of accumulation, adjustment, and repair that mirror the daily processing and deciphering required to be in the world. In a 2017 catalog essay on recent paintings, Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties, wrote “Deborah Zlotsky’s paintings are, at their essence, a convergence: of Renaissance images and pop art, of the past and present, of science fiction and reality, of physicality and illusion.”
Zlotsky is represented by Kathryn Markel Fine Arts in New York and Robischon Gallery in Denver, and her drawings are in the curated flat files of Pierogi in New York. In 2012 and 2018, she received New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellowships in Painting. Recent solo exhibitions include Now and later, Kathryn Markel Fine Arts; Fata Morgana, Robischon Gallery; and Ephemera, and the Studio Art Center International Gallery (SACI), Florence, Italy. Recent site-specific works include On the Wall: Deborah Zlotsky, Providence College, Body Politic, Robischon Gallery, and Flight Patterns, Albany International Airport, Albany, NY, and an interactive installation, Just a minute!, Chesterwood, Stockbridge, MA. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA; McKenzie Fine Art, NY; Pierogi, NY; Dolby Chadwick Gallery, San Francisco, CA; the Redwood Library, Newport, RI; UB Anderson Gallery, Buffalo, NY; and the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, among others.
Zlotsky’s work is in public and private collections, including Nordstrom, Capital One, the RISD Museum, Progressive Insurance, Fidelity Investments, and the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection. Recent residency fellowships include Yaddo, the MacDowell, the Saltonstall Foundation, and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art.
Zlotsky has a B.A. in the history of art from Yale University and an M.F.A. in painting and drawing from the University of Connecticut. She lives in Delmar, NY and teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI where she is an associate professor of Experimental and Foundation Studies.
