The essential truth of a culture lies somewhere between the physical and the ideal, between the multiplicity of experience and the unity of thought. As moderns, we have science and certainty on our side, allowing us to reach far beyond the assumptive speculations of our ancestors in understanding and influencing culture. We of the modern era have invented the laboratory, mastering Nature within its confines. And yet, we are no closer to grasping beauty. We are left facing the same mysteries that inspired the ancients.

Symbols, and especially iconic symbols, are as storehouses of collected knowledge acting to guide us each in our efforts to participate effectively in our culture. For Zelenak, the task as an artist is akin to that of philosopher Alan Watts, which is to root out the common definitions of these cultural signposts and ‘denature’ them, stripping them bare for all to see and experience in their essential parametric truth.

Zelenak focusses his attention on the familiar iconography of trees, crosses, stairs, arrows, and circles that pervade our experience of every day Westernized living – symbols that we ‘take up’ and manipulate subconsciously within the moment.

Zelenak’s works express the semantic, organic, subjective experience icons attempt to signify. Yet symbols and icons are themselves modified with every use affecting both signified and signifier. This needs to be recognized in the evolving definition of our culture-making tools. (Zelenak and Miller 1-2).

Zelenak states, “The circle is one of the most recognizable icons. Concave, convex and the emerging crescent – this imagery appeared in my work as early as 1982. The circle – contained yet fluid – has a peripheral border, a container of sorts, yet a centre that defies containment. The presence of this centre, a sense of being all-together-at-once, subconsciously acts as a connection to the collective consciousness. Stories, icons, imagery have afforded humankind a feeling of security, of placement, of belonging and provided a pathway to the inner world, and, to plumbing the depths of consciousness.” (Kovach C. S.).

Further to the symbolism in Zelenak’s works, Buj writes: (They) “… are permeated by cosmic prompts and spiritual insinuations. They reside everywhere – in the shapes and forms of the objects, in their materiality… (and extend to incorporate both modern and ancient tenets.)”(Buj 9) “Allusion, allegory, metaphor, symbolism, and myths are themselves divining devices or meanings of cognitive mapping. The truth is there, traced out in ghostly demarcations across the starry heavens or hidden in subterranean rills.” (Buj 11).

Zelenak’s works “… advertise nothing, market no ideology or opinion, make no attempt to recruit the viewer for a political or social cause… They have emerged from a long, patient practice of… persistent labour with a few ordinary materials, a handful of ideas – nothing sensational or showy, nothing that might wow the great world’s fashionistas.” (Mays 21).

The spirituality embedded in Zelenak’s work “… consists precisely in its exclusive, disciplined affirmation of the material, of the physical here-and-nowness of tin and copper and lead and pigment. (His)… is an art of the real. His beauties are those of the concrete and the process, his materialism is a tonic for the sensibilities worried by the relentless abstraction of late modern consumer culture.” (Mays 23)

(Mays 23) concludes: “’Say it, no ideas but in things,’ urges poet William Carlos Williams in his epic work Patterson. Ed Zelenak says it in his artworks, which are among the most thought-provoking being made by any advanced artist of his generation.” 

Buj, Lorenzo, “From Minimalism to Metaphor”, Ed Zelenak: Divining the Immeasurable, Museum London Catalogue, 2015

Mays, John Bentley, “Things: Ed Zelenak“,  Ed Zelenak: Divining the Immeasurable,  Museum London Catalogue, 2015

Zelenak Orin and Susan Miller, “Tables and Wall-works,” Essay and conversation with artist, 2005

Kovach C.S., “Ed Zelenak Distant Realms”, Christopher Cutts Gallery, March, 2018