Hampshire Alum Artists Scott Shepard 89S and Andrew Zarou 90F Exhibit Together in Germany
From September 27 to October 13, Close As Bone, which explores abstract painting by artists in New York City and Berlin, will be on view at Berlin’s Bethanien Studio 1. Two artists who met at Hampshire and have stayed in touch for more than 30 years are among eight showing work.
“In the late ’80s/early ’90s, the Hampshire Art Barn was a hothouse,” says Scott Shepard, who lives in Germany and helped organize the show.
“It was often acknowledged by visiting artists and professors as being just as rigorous and serious as nationally competitive grad school programs,” says Andrew Zarou, who splits his time between Brooklyn and western Massachusetts.
“Led by Denzil Hurley [a renowned painter and former professor], who regularly brought in the smartest artists around at the time as visiting artists, the program was a sort of boot camp for fine art, with experimentation and full commitment prerequisites,” Shepard says. “The Art Barn gave any hungry young artists all the challenges they could take to prepare them for a lifetime of making. A rare moment, with the highly unlikely coincidence of a small group of very different but equally committed young artists, to my knowledge all still working today.”
“My education at Hampshire was critical to forming my core as a visual artist. The questioning that was encouraged was always centered on what is essential versus that which is extraneous, anecdotal, and distracting.”— Andrew Zarou 90F
“My education at Hampshire was critical to forming my core as a visual artist,” says Zarou. “The questioning that was encouraged was always centered on what is essential versus that which is extraneous, anecdotal, and distracting. Studying drawing, painting, and sculpture, I learned to think on paper, be resourceful, really listen, ask genuine questions, and pragmatically start from a point of simplicity toward complexity.”
“Scott Shepard and I overlapped during our time as students there and have stayed in orbit ever since,” Zarou continues. “We were both deeply affected and influenced by our teachers and peers.”
“Bethanien Studio 1 is a publicly funded gallery,” says Shepard. “Imagine if each borough in New York City had a taxpayer-funded space with an open, rotating curatorial program and with a very crucial policy: no solo or two-person shows. It has to be a group. A conversation. So I naturally thought of Andrew’s work.”
Close As Bone opens Friday, September 27, at 6 p.m. and a conversation with the painters will take place on Sunday, September 29, at 2 p.m.
Learn more about studio and visual arts at Hampshire.
Banner: Paintings by Scott Shepard and Andrew Zarou, as well as the two artists hanging work at Bethanien Studio 1 in Berlin. (photo by Johannes Regin)
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