Z Behl

The work of New York artist Z Behl creates fantastical worlds, incorporating both imagined and everyday characters. Her projects include works on paper, photography, installation, and tableau as well as a number of sculptural elements. In her 2012 works for Battle for Lagniappe, Behl created twenty-five woodcut luan silhouettes, each transformed by day-glow florescent and oil paint to depict a rich series of characters. Often incorporating her wooden paintings into video or photographic work, Behl continually re-imagines the lives of her unique figures. Says the artist of this process, “it is not that I don’t care for the [painting’s] well-being, or find them to be precious, it is that the only way I know how to enjoy my own art is by using it.”

Behl’s work has been shown in a number of exhibitions including "Joker's Solitare," at Kai Matsumiya, New York, Glass House at Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, The Last Brucennial, New York, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, NY, Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans, LA, Costado Galeria, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and 7ELEVEN Gallery, New York. She is the recipient of a Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant.