Bryan Zanisnik Goes to the Meadowlands

Where are the blank spots on the map? In this film, artist Bryan Zanisnik hikes through the New Jersey Meadowlands landscape and exhibits his work Meadowlands Picaresque at the Brooklyn Museum. “I love this idea of this landscape that’s constantly evolving but also devolving,” says Zanisnik as he explores the brackish wetlands, abandoned train lines, and rocky outcroppings of Snake Hill that mark an ecosystem continually in flux.

An area roughly the size of nearby Manhattan, Zanisnik views the Meadowlands as the mirror image or subconscious of New York City, a place where the unwanted—such as the ruins of the original Pennsylvania Station—sinks into the eighteen stories of soft clay beneath the surface. “It’s kind of monumental in its nothingness,” he marvels, remarking that “this felt like a place that no one ever bothered to mark or map.”

Comparing the scenery to a stream of consciousness sentence, Zanisnik takes a similarly psychological approach to the construction of his loosely narrative artwork. He begins by taking photographs of the Meadowlands, incorporates a wide variety of objects—natural, man-made, and personal artifacts—into a room-sized installation, and periodically performs the work as a surreal tableau vivant that incorporates his parents. While drawing inspiration from the Meadowlands and his native New Jersey, Zanisnik adds that “no matter how many times I visit…I never understand it completely. And I may never understand it, but that’s what holds my attention.”

Featuring the artwork Meadowlands Picaresque (2013), installed at the Brooklyn Museum in the exhibition Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond (2014), as well as music by Chris Zabriskie: CGI Snake (2011); What True Self? Feels Bogus, Let’s Watch Jason X; Out of the Skies, Under the Earth (both 2012); and Cylinder 9 (2014).

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