JZ/ZZ: Fields, Fragments, Fictions

I’m very excited to launch my new line in collaboration with my mum, Zoe Zenghelis (ZZ) who is currently exhibiting at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. Even though she began her talk to a packed audience with the comment “I am a painter not a talker” she nevertheless went on to wow them with recollections of working with my dad Elia Zenghelis, Rem Koolhaas, Madelon Vriesendorp and Zaha Hadid in the heyday of OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture). It’s marvellous to see that she is finally getting this kind of international recognition in her own right for her work as a painter and that she is emerging from the shadow of her more famous collaborators at OMA.

Even more marvellous for me is that the Zoe Zenghelis exhibition has given me the opportunity to join forces with my mum in this artistic collaboration - blending the disciplines of fine art and printed textiles - to produce a range of JZ/ZZ items for the museum store.

The exhibition brings together work from across five decades, where you can see her imagination evolve from the more architectural paintings of the Hotel Sphinx for OMA, to the sensual works in oil of abstract geometries which evoke surrealism in their poetic take on fictional cities and landscapes .

We spent a very interesting week in Pittsburgh in the company of Theodossis Issaias and Hamed Khosravi who organised and curated this exhibition as well as meeting many other fabulous people who are involved with the museum and the musem’s store.