{"id":92491,"date":"2025-04-23T13:21:46","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T20:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=92491"},"modified":"2025-04-24T02:54:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T09:54:41","slug":"no-woman-is-an-island-matalyn-zundels-exploration-of-female-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/no-woman-is-an-island-matalyn-zundels-exploration-of-female-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"No Woman is an Island: Matalyn Zundel\u2019s Exploration of Female Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Installation view of Matalyn Zundel’s “No Woman Is an Island” at Finch Lane Gallery with, from left, \u201cThe village can only take you so far,” “And in the end the only steps that matter are the ones you take all by yourself,” “Everyone’s gotten really good at the same thing,” and \u201cShe is the line that ties me to things.” Image by Shawn Rossiter.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWhen I set out to start this series, I had spent two years doing only self portraits, and I got so bored of it,\u201d says artist Matalyn Zundel<\/a> during the opening reception for her latest show, No Woman Is an Island<\/em>. \u201cI just started painting my friends, and I wanted my references to be in the wild and not posed, and certainly not forced\u2026I wanted it to be casual but at the same time, worthy of memorialization.\u201d Zundel is a master of proportion, manipulating perspective to render her subjects larger than life. The ten-piece exhibition, composed entirely of large-scale oil paintings, features portraits of women, viewed through various lenses, all of whom the artist knows personally.<\/h4>\n

\u201cWe often joke that we raised each other,\u201d says Zundel in reference to an up-close and personal portrait of her best friend eating 99-cent ramen.\u00a0The works comprising No Woman Is an Island<\/em> capture raw, unfiltered moments that reflect a sense of authenticity within the female experience. \u201cShe is the line that ties me to things\u201d is striking upon first glance. The imposing scale of the painting contrasts with the intimate, close-up perspective of the subject; yet a sense of intimacy is created, as if you were sitting across from someone at the kitchen table. The subject\u2019s eyes are soft, her position relaxed and unforced, her gaze declaring a resolute presence that is neither forced nor understated; she simply is. \u201cI use oil paint for its texture and for its forgiveness\u2026its bones can be buried under a layer that is thicker and more confident than the one that came before,\u201d comments Zundel in her exhibition statement. The artist’s intentional and blurred strokes blend the confines of her pieces, making them become all too familiar, so that \u201cShe is the line that ties me to things\u201d suddenly transforms into the Polaroid photo stuck on your refrigerator or tucked patiently into your wallet.<\/h4>\n
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Matalyn Zundel’s \u201cShe is the line that ties me to things.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cRage becomes her\u201d shares a similar perspective, yet strikes a new chord altogether. The viewer has a chance to get even closer to the subject, taking a nearly fish-eyed lens to a woman staring off into the distance, cropped close for confrontation. Scribbled neatly in the upper right corner of the piece is the line, \u201cI have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you could not believe.\u201d The subject seems to peel from the sage background, her face paused, suspended halfway between admiration and irritation. It is said that the parts of your brain that feel love and disgust are the same, and Zundel seems to capture this within the same frame as the complexity of female emotion.<\/h4>\n

Zundel has a profound ability to capture specific moments that are too understated to articulate, yet too resonant to forget. In painting the women in her life, she finds recurring motifs in her practice. \u201cWhen I started this piece, I had the intention to fill in those other figures, and it just kind of happened,\u201d says Zundel in reference to \u201cThe village can only take you so far.\u201d\u2028It’s a portrait of Zundel\u2019s sister, sitting at a table in a restaurant surrounded by other figures, none of whom are fully complete. She stares into her phone while everyone else seems to melt away, their undone faces becoming part of the woodwork. \u201cI like that she\u2019s on her phone and alone in the space even though she\u2019s surrounded by people, that feeling everyone can relate to, being alone in a crowd,\u201d Zundel says. Loneliness seems to be a pervasive emotion throughout the exhibition, often married with a modern setting and intentional colors.<\/h4>\n

Sitting alone on the far back wall of the exhibition is Zundel\u2019s sole self-portrait in the show, “Except Me.” \u201cThe title of my show is this lame thing I do in my journal, I read this poem forever ago called ‘No Man is an Island,’ and sometimes when I\u2019m feeling particularly angsty, I\u2019ll write in my journal \u201cNo Man is an Island, except me\u201d, and go off about whatever. So I wanted my show to be titled ‘No Woman is an Island,’ and that piece is titled, ‘Except Me.'” By far one of the most emotional works in the exhibition, it pictures Zundel on a floral couch, her posture slumped and casual, the dark window behind her obscuring the line between night and early morning. The work exhales, releasing a sense of stillness that is both comforting and isolating. Much like the subject in \u201cRage becomes her,\u201d Zundel\u2019s expression in \u201cExcept Me\u201d carries an emotion that remains with the viewer long after. The feeling of loneliness creeps in once more. \u201cIt was, and is, radical for a woman to represent another woman on canvas,\u201d says Zundel, but even more radical is the act of portraying oneself with such raw honesty.<\/h4>\n

\u201cI kept coming back to this idea that women are not one thing, and it sounds so simple but for whatever reason, media, and how [women] are portrayed, just doesn\u2019t understand that,\u201d says Zundel. It is rare to find even so-called unfiltered depictions of women that are not trying to persuade you in some way. No Woman Is an Island<\/em> delivers just that: unfiltered, honest portraits.<\/h4>\n
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Installation view of Matalyn Zundel’s “No Woman Is an Island” at Finch Lane Gallery with, from left, “Rage becomes her,” “Hey Google, Happy New Year” and “Except me.” Image by Shawn Rossiter.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

No Woman Is an Island<\/em>, Finch Lane Gallery<\/a>, Salt Lake City, through May 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhen I set out to start this series, I had spent two years doing only self portraits, and I got so bored of it,\u201d says artist Matalyn Zundel during the opening reception for her latest show, No Woman Is an Island. \u201cI just started painting my friends, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1725,"featured_media":92493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[96,4472],"class_list":["post-92491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-finch-lane-gallery","tag-matalyn-zundel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/matalyn-zundel-scaled-e1745438275496.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-24 07:30:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1725"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92491"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92517,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92491\/revisions\/92517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}