Phantom Limb: Mixed Media Works by Zach Litwack
Liggett Studio
July 14-August 4, 2023
Who are you when you lose part of what makes you “you”?
Zach Litwack started asking that question in the depths of the early pandemic when his filmmaking work had shut down, and like everyone else, he was forced to find other ways to get through the days. So he dug into his creative toolkit (he’s worked as a writer, educator, musician, visual artist, and more), picked up scissors, paint, and glue, and started building mixed-media pieces and character studies about loss, memory, identity, and what he calls “the pitfalls of nostalgia.” The art that emerged—collected in “Phantom Limb,” on view at Liggett Studio through August 4—pulls together many elements of Litwack’s creative intelligence into a body of work that, with its striking visuals and gentle pressure on tender psychological places, resounds like a quiet gong.
On its surface, “Phantom Limb” explores the physical phenomenon where people continue to feel sensation in a part of their body that has been removed. But Litwack takes the prompt further, as he notes in his artist statement, “to not only include arms and legs, but any part of the human body that may be detached in some way, and importantly, trigger memories and emotions as a result of being absent.”
With their minimal color palette (white, black, blue, red, sepia), high-impact graphic design, tactile collage and paint techniques on rough wood panel, and sharp focus inspired by vintage anatomical drawings and medical illustrations, these pieces hit the eye from across the room like contemporary icons. Lines radiate from bodies and hang from horizontal stripes, strongly punctuated by dots like train terminal markers on a map, or the ends of beaded curtains, or the “anklebone connected to the kneebone”-shaped hole in the Operation game. Energy released outward from the figures turns right back around and comes in again; each piece is somehow both static and vibrating. Body parts are isolated, identities unmoored, new ones still in process—as in the process of collage itself.