ALMOND ZIGMUND

Industrial-Strength Beauty

By Jess Frost

Durell Godfrey

(07/17/2007)    The East End can be deceiving for young artists. Although its history draws them from around the world, until a few years ago, the market here for “emerging” contemporary and conceptual art was almost nonexistent.

    Almond Zigmund’s work was included in the 2001 annual juried show at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, but it wasn’t until her solo exhibit in 2004 at the Avram Gallery at Southampton College that she drew local attention.

    “Transitioning from an academic setting to this ‘idealized’ arts community was a challenge,” she said recently.

    Ms. Zigmund moved to East Hampton in 2000 after receiving an M.F.A. from the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. While living in Vegas she was directly influenced by the flamboyant city, whose extravagant architectural and commercial design directs its visitors with obvious intent.

    The work she made in Vegas was “a direct response to the facade-driven culture.” These three-dimensional pieces, made from everything from brightly colored “pimp my ride” car vinyl to Lili Pulitzer textiles, implied industrial design but contradicted it with nonfunctional “objectness.”

    Hung on the wall of a 7-Eleven or by the pool of the Algiers Hotel and Casino, the out-of-context materials and placement of the works were clever and witty — asking her audience to question the concepts of form and design.

    When Ms. Zigmund moved with her boyfriend, Jason Weiner, to East Hampton, they opened Almond restaurant with their business partner Eric Lemonides. All three grew up in Brooklyn and had remained friends.

    The combination of Mr. Weiner’s culinary skills and Mr. Lemonides’s front-of-the-house charm and expertise made the venture all the more irresistible. Almond not only became the namesake of the restaurant, but spent the next four years working alongside her partner in the kitchen, supporting his endeavor. She kept a studio in the restaurant’s attic, working diligently between shifts and in the off-season.

    It was only two years ago that she was able to retire from the business and focus solely on her artwork. Since then she has exhibited extensively throughout the country, and she is now in the process of building an addition to their house to accommodate the growing scale of her artworks and the demand for them.

“VT 5,” (2006) by Almond Zigmund; flocking, gouache, and enamel on paper

    Her solo exhibit “Don’t Let the Fear Get You Down” just closed in Los Angeles in June, and in September she will participate in “Diaspora” at the Las Vegas Art Museum, curated by the well-known art and culture critic Dave Hickey. Her second solo exhibit at Rebecca Ibel Gallery in Columbus, Ohio, will open this winter.

    “It’s a luxury to be in such close proximity to the exhibition space when I’m working on an installation,” Ms. Zigmund said as she displayed the maquette for a large-scale sculpture to be included in her upcoming exhibit at the Parrish Art Museum this fall. The artist’s work is often site-specific and she must rely on a museum or gallery for the architectural details necessary to create a scale model.

    When viewing Ms. Zigmund’s wall installations or drawings for the first time, it is easy to make the quick Op Art reference, but her work won’t let you hold that stance.

    Her palette may be best described as “plastic” but it’s as high art as an Eames era “plastic.” She uses the bright, glossy commercial colors to keep the old-guard geometric minimalism references at bay, while embracing the permission given by them to “go industrial.”

    “The installation environments can easily dictate how the work is interpreted,” Ms. Zigmund said. “Here on the East End, that work tends to be read more as somewhat historically nostalgic — a visually formal investigation rather than the metaphor of the pastiche.”

    Despite the challenges, the move to the East End seems to have influenced her work considerably. Whereas the earlier wall pieces created a spatial tension specific to the sculptural object, Ms. Zigmund now uses her works to visually carve into the architecture, engaging the gallery itself by carefully considering the negative spaces created.

    “The idea of a fence or barrier creates a particular tension in that it is somewhat transparent and speaks of desire — being bound in the ‘here’ and fetishizing the ‘there.’ ”

    The exhibit at the Parrish will feature a large-scale sculpture that functions as a screen or wall within the gallery as well as a vinyl wall piece, and a neon wall piece.

    Ms. Zigmund culls the patterns she uses from various sources, although they often come from residential and commercial applications.

    When traced these sources can lead back through the history of ornamentation, such as a wrought-iron fence dating to the 18th century, when artisans made ancillary structures — walls and fences — that used spatial illusions to bring character to the grounds surrounding an architectural environment.

    “I’ll use a pattern from a cinderblock fence found in an contemporary industrial park, that is clearly based on early French motif, which comes from Roman ornamentation — it is like a vernacular of design that gets constantly recycled.”

    Much in the way pop artists used commercial imagery in new contexts, Ms. Zigmund’s installations use the institutionalized design of our urban sprawl as a multilayered metaphor about the tension between public and private space. By reappropriating these structures in a museum setting, Ms. Zigmund asks us to reflect on our industrial era and reconsider the beauty and reality of its artistic origins.

    “Remembering the Future” will be on view at the Parrish from Oct. 20 through Dec. 31. Ms. Zigmund’s earlier works can be seen locally on the walls of Almond and Almondito, and her drawings can be viewed at the Drawing Room in East Hampton.

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    Jess Frost lives and works in Springs.