DW Zinsser

Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA

Artist statement

I create large scale drawings of abstracted figures out of minuscule dots. A sense of universal frustration is depicted through their strained, writhing faces, often gazing up, seeking transcendence, seeking to dispel the body. I deconstruct bodily forms in an attempt to glorify the formation that my subjects are trying to escape. My work canonizes excess by illustrating piles of trash, dangling totems of plastic discarded objects, mounds of flesh. I explore the resilience of the queer body, creating mountainous, wrinkled, cobwebbed conglomerations of muscles, fat and skin consisting of tiny dots. I use symbolic objects and characters as offerings that accumulate into a cluttered shrine to grief. I employ an element of humor and kitsch, which serves as a coping mechanism for the shame retained within the body. I consider my body and the ones I depict as an altar constructed to conjure beloved memories. I explore how grief affects the body by illustrating the physical manifestations of grief through wrinkles, scars and blemishes. My subjects, cramped in strained poses, are intricately cluttered with offerings that perch and dangle from their limbs. These subjects and objects embody visceral grief and the notion of survivors' guilt. Their writhing faces and tumorous flesh are an amalgamation of longing. The objects represent offerings to conjure back moments in life; to harness the memories tainted by guilt and grief by baiting fishing lures, lighting candle sticks or...

Artwork