JEFF ZIMMERMANN - STATEMENT

I describe my work as realism with content or "Popped art". In my murals, the subjects are people caught by my camera. Everyday people who become symbols for their expression or the associations they create through their actions. I try to explore smaller more subtle emotions and feelings. The fifteen second, television commercial mode of thinking can not be applied to my work. Real issues and ideas are fuzzy and hard to make conclusions about. There is also something incredible about work that has no owner and is subservient to its physical environment.

Patterns are pulled from real life to add structure, but also stand for the place or thing they were taken from. The work can be read like a poem or a puzzle. The various pieces, whether collaged, painted or written, give clues for arriving at some level of understanding. Text is incorporated to clarify feeling and content. Spanish, Arabic, Spanglish, Swahili even Braille play roles in interpretation. Some text has a different meaning when heard as opposed to simply read. I want the audience to be rewarded for making associations.

My studio work has become a search for the subtleties in inherently emotionally charged material. An effort to create environments which tangibly fill-up with an image's intrinsic emotions.

"The ice cream truck paintings are devoid of drivers and lines of kids and they lack any identifying surroundings. Stripped of context, they are oddly forlorn, charged with a surreal presence. Painted on grommeted, roughly elliptical canvases about six feet across, the trucks seem to float in midair, as if conjured from memory."

- Jeff Huebner, The Chicago Reader, September 2000
 

"...But these dream vehicles are not all that they appear to be in their bright patchwork of product decals and graphics. Zimmermann includes the dents, scuffs and rust that mar their bodies, evidence of the imperfection and reality of the adult world seeping into the sweetness of one's memories."

- John Brunetti, New Art Examiner, November 2001
 

My newest work deals with perception - photo realistic renderings of extreme closeups of metallic surfaces. These paintings are colorful abstractions until the viewer gets far enough away from the work to be able to appreciate the subject as a tangible surface area. The farther the viewer gets away, the closer and sharper the image becomes. The viewer is forced to "step back" and consider what meaning is implied by the subject. Everyday objects with meaning, hence the term "Popped art".