YURI ZUPANCIC
YURI ZUPANCIC
Born in 1980, Yuri Zupancic is an American artist currently based in Paris. Largely self-taught, he's created and exhibited visual art around the world for 20 years. Most known for his miniature paintings on microchips, his video art and sculptures have also found increasing visibility. The artist believes everything is connected, and is particularly fascinated by the ever-evolving links between nature and technology. Seeking élan vital (life force) in unlikely places, Yuri's work teases naturalistic elegance out of synthetic materials.
Yuri’s family has lived in Colorado for over a century, and he grew up exploring the Rocky Mountains. This exhibition marks his fourth artist residency on the backside of Aspen Mountain. His son, Gustave Midnight, is named after the road which is his favorite place to create. He has exhibited microchip paintings, sculptures and video art several times in Aspen but this is his first opportunity to put it all together for a solo show in this town which has long been a home away from home.
“Everything ‘virtual’ was so abstract and distant. Until it wasn’t. Online banking, shopping, working, dating – even catching up with friends and family – has become so integral to most of our lives that its exoticism has evolved into normality. This shift happened so quickly and (mostly) seamlessly that I’m left grasping pixels and trying to weigh the tangible, palpable presence of the myriad fruits of the internet explosion. It’s a cornucopia of knowledge and distraction, of convenience and confusion, of utopia and turmoil. And it’s only growing. That’s our reality.” - Yuri Zupancic
AVAILABLE WORKS
Recently I’ve been continuing miniature painting on microchips while combining these with sculptures made from electronic waste. I’ve also been excited about a new format of multi-media painting which combines digital animation and video mapping with classical painting on canvas.
I try to keep my eyes open to new, unexpected inspirations every day, but nature and technology are constant sources. The natural world is the epitome of elegance and intelligence, but the more our tech advances, the more I see that we and our machines are inherently connected to the natural order – and chaos – of everything.
Over the past decade, I’ve found the inspiration to make many of my favorite artworks in Aspen and on the backside of the mountain. But until now my work has only been shared with a small slice of the community. The last time my work was exhibited here, in 2020 at Skye Gallery, the pandemic shut everything down. So, four years later, a dream is finally coming true.
The show is called ‘Real Virtuality’, which refers to the fact that ‘virtual’, online, aspects of our life have now become very, very real, affecting 99% of our activities in tangible, palpable ways. This raises a lot of serious questions, but my work is also about having fun, cultivating a sense of wonder in our strangely and rapidly evolving world.
It holds a lot of heavy feelings for me, but I’m very happy with the work ‘American Online Civil War’ which is a map of the USA made out of broken circuit boards with a miniature oil painting of a Civil War battle on a microchip in the middle. I originally started it here in 2020, then was inspired to finish it last week while reeling from all the online vitriol and political chaos, which remind me that some wounds from the 1860s are still festering. Many of today’s battles are fought in social media posts and comment sections, though, which is funny in a surreal way.
I know I’m working well when I’m just watching my hands create, letting intuition take over and the subconscious do its thing. I tend to overanalyze things, so creating art is a way to transcend that and connect with deeply held sentiments.
