Jill O’Bryan:
Breathing with the Elements
Zane Bennett Contemporary Art | June 2022
Thousands of New Mexicans have passed Jill O’Bryan’s yellow-and-black billboards on I-25 South between Santa Fe and Las Vegas, New Mexico. The latest sign read “7.5 billion of us breathing together right this moment.” Not too far from where it sat is O’Bryan’s studio, situated atop a mesa outside Las Vegas. This is where she breathes, connects with the earth and creates artwork distilled from her experience.
Breathing with the Elements offers an intimate window into O’Bryan’s world. She explores her relationship to the land through two new series of breath paintings, titled Breathing with the Sky and Breathing with the Moon, large-scale frottages and never-before-exhibited photographs that require close proximity. O’Bryan writes, “Whether through breath drawings, meditation paintings, earth rubbings or photography. I experiment with alternate ways of being immersed in primal connections to the earth, the moon, the air and the sky — to record our presence here as we leave impressions of ourselves on the environment, and the environment forms and informs us.”
Press
“Moon, mesa, sky, air—with singular intimacy, Jill O’Bryan attends to the fundamental elements of earthly life. Hers is an attention that attunes not only to the wondrous matter of the world — striated rock, juniper branch — but to the mystical geometries that bind this planet together, and us to it.”
-Dan Beachy-Quick, Artforum
My contributions: Curatorial with Marissa Fassano
Artwork: Jill O’Bryan
Photography: Byron Flesher
Marketing Writing: Marissa Fassano