Jill O'Bryan: Breathing with the Elements | Zane Bennett Contemporary Art

Exhibition Guide

Thousands of New Mexicans have passed Jill O’Bryan’s yellow-and-black billboards on I-25 South between Santa Fe and Las Vegas, New Mexico. The latest sign read “7.5 billion of us breathing together right this moment.” Not too far from where it sat is O’Bryan’s studio, situated atop a mesa outside Las Vegas. This is where she breathes, connects with the earth and creates artwork distilled from her experience.

Breathing with the Elements offers an intimate window into O’Bryan’s world. She explores her relationship to the land through new breath paintings, eight-foot frottages (ground rubbings) and small, never-before-exhibited photographs. New works from O’Bryan’s well-known series of breath drawings align the breath with the body, and the mind with the world.
Curatorial Note
Marissa Fassano
This exhibition began with a curious peek through a pinhole. O’Bryan has never exhibited her photography before and usually reserves the diminutive images as gifts to friends and family, but these windows into her world introduced me—in small slices—to the grand expanse of this place. The snapshots of unending sky condensed into intimate spaces on paper serve to underscore the universal message of how she collaborates with the land here.

These photographs remind me of how I first saw this land, this sky, these arid-yet-alive elements of the Southwest. O’Bryan then expands on this sense of vitality through her own wondrous elements–the soft marks of her hand and sheer papers that practically float (as if only held down to earth by their frames). O’Bryan enables us all to look through the pinhole onto a vast otherworld – on this land, and in this show.
Artist Statement
Jill O'Bryan
For many years, I have sought to reveal a primal interconnectivity with nature through various approaches to drawing. Whether through breath drawings, breathing meditation paintings, earth rubbings, sculpture, or photography, I experiment with alternate and immersive ways of being connected to the earth, the moon, the air, the sky.

I choose materials, colors, and processes with the intention of connecting with the natural world. As an artist, I design methods of experimentation that are revelatory and connective. Through these experiments of recording I’ve recognized again and again the interconnectedness between myself and the elements. For me, this interconnection is the true wonder of our universe.
Read the full statement.
Installation Views

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Featured Artworks
NM.5.21
Graphite on paper
"Where I live there is a desert mesa; I take large sheets of paper out onto the bare ground and rub the paper with large graphite rocks. In this way, I acknowledge my body as belonging to the active intersection where the sky meets land; a participant in the elemental forces that shape the land. "
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Mesa #42
Archival Pigment Print
"In this exhibition I introduce photographs of the intimate places that I find on the mesa. These images depict nooks and crannies in the landscape, each having its own sense of place and time. Vast landscapes are filled with these magical spaces, each with its own hyper-local geology."
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Breathing into the Moon #19
Watercolor, acrylic, and pencil on Bhutan Mitsumata rice paper
"This series was made under the iridescent New Mexico sky where I meditate on the moon at night, in daylight while the moon is high above, and on its many transitions. This work has been important in that it has simply allowed me to be present with a primal experience of moonlight."
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Breathing into the Sky #11
Watercolor and pencil on Bhutan Mitsumata rice paper
"The new 'breathing' paintings in this exhibition are a departure from the rigorous mark making of my 'breath drawings.' The newly evolved meditations bring into focus impressions that emerged when I stopped archiving each breath and shifted the focus to moonlight."
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Cone Series
Cast plaster with steel stand
"Where there is earth and sky and breath, there must also be light. My white plaster cones are geometric expressions of earth meeting sky. They lift toward the sky and reach down toward the ground, linking the two."
All Artworks
Jill O'Bryan

Jill O'Bryan (b. 1956, Chicago, IL) is an artist whose practice lives between meditation and aesthetics. Though the artist's practice initially centered painting, a fruitful love affair with the tranquility of Southwestern landscapes combined with a diligent practice of mindfulness has enabled O'Bryan to expand into works both 2D and sculptural that examine the place of breath and the body in relation to the natural world.

O'Bryan has exhibited internationally at spaces like the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Esteban Vicente in Segovia, Spain and Galerie Annick Ketele in Antwerp, Belgium among numerous others. The artist has also shown extensively in New Mexico through institutions including the New Mexico Museum of Art, Center for Contemporary Art and Mayeur Projects. Her work is also housed in the permanent collections of institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum, National Gallery of Art, and the Davis Museum at Wellesley College.

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