Before / After Thought

Claire Hashman, Jim Radakovich, Anya Rosen, James Stamboni, Amy Swartelé, Jocelyn Tsaih, Robert Zurer

Collective Z presents Before / After Thought, a group exhibition of twenty-one paintings by seven contemporary artists.

Surrealism never settled whether the unconscious image should be found or built — whether the artist gives up control and lets the hand move first, or constructs the impossible picture deliberately until it reads as fact. Before / After Thought hangs both answers in one room, arranged so viewers can walk the spectrum from one method to the other.

On the found side, Robert Zurer begins each work from automatic drawing with no preconceived plan; Anya Rosen's chalk-pastel and acrylic creatures emerge mark by mark; and Amy Swartelé paints hybrid beings that splice human, animal, and object. On the built side, Claire Hashman constructs mirror- symmetric, mandala-based paintings from her series Within and Without; James Stamboni renders secular altarpieces in old-master detail on aluminum leaf and brass; and Jim Radakovich's new Gigantic Dreams oils set flying saucers and a lake monster into calm American landscapes. Jocelyn Tsaih's soft, airbrushed figures — portals, in her words, “without a fixed image on the other side” — hold the middle.

“The unconscious doesn’t care how you reach it. Surrender and obsession turn out to be the same road, walked from opposite ends,” says exhibition curator Alex Z. Wang.

Claire Hashman studied at the Art Students League of New York; her work has been reviewed in Forbes and shown in over 30 exhibitions. Jim Radakovich graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art alongside Jeff Koons and Donald Baechler, emerged with the East Village scene in 1981, and appeared in “The New Irascibles”, Arts Magazine's 1985 survey of that moment. Anya Rosen is a Brooklyn-based painter with residencies including the Vermont Studio Center and Acre, and exhibitions at the Pensacola Museum of Art and the Cementa Festival (Australia). James Stamboni, who holds a BFA from SUNY New Paltz, returned to painting after severe complications following a 2016 adverse reaction to a fluoroquinolone antibiotic. Amy Swartelé is Professor of Painting at SUNY Potsdam, with more than 20 solo exhibitions across North America and Europe. Jocelyn Tsaih is a New York-based artist who studied at the School of Visual Arts. Robert Zurer works in Philadelphia and was accepted into the White Columns Curated Artist Registry in 2022.