ZAK HELENSKE
Visible on the Ground, 2025. Ash, lilac, brass, 74 x 15 x 16.5”.
Outdoor Thoughts, 2025. Ash, lilac, brass, 28 x 6 x 6.5”.
We Sold our Seeds to the Poison Company, 2025. Ash, lilac, black walnut 13 x 15 x 63”.
Kings Eat Kings, 2025. Ash, lilac, brass, 78 x 17 x 7”.
Breathe so they can Breathe/North Star, 2025. Ash, lilac, brass, 70 x 16 x 16”.
The Purple Lines Mean its Poison, 2025. Black walnut, lilac, brass, 75 x 15 x 20”.
STATEMENT
My work describes a disconnection between our built and wild landscapes. A disconnection between ourselves and our place. Interrupted by a digital worldview that is individually unsustainable and collectively viral.
It is about action and labor, energy source and energy exhaustion. I find clarity in the manic activity of an art practice and am grounded by the physical intellectualization of labor, material, and creative research.
I objectify the landscape as a way to show reverence for our forever old relationship. I celebrate it with gratitude, melancholy, and joy. These sculptures, reference volunteerism as inevitable growth, volume as history, shape as behavior, and plant as object.
