ALLISON ZURFLUH

THE WATER COLUMN

Allison Zurfluh’s practice is rooted in the Venetian Lagoon, where the visible landscape is inextricably linked with the ecological
processes unfolding beneath it. In The Water Column, she moves into a darker, more introspective register. Earthy, mineral hues are built
up slowly, recalling the deposition and transformation of matter. Rather than depicting the landscape, the paintings evoke its underlying
structures: sedimentation, tidal movement and the relationship between surface and depth.
For Zurfluh, painting is less an act of representation than one of immersion. Her horizontal fields are neither landscape nor abstraction in
the conventional sense, but spaces where geological time, tidal rhythm and human experience coexist. These paintings do not attempt
to describe the lagoon. They emerge from it.

The water column is the lagoon seen in section: light, sediment, currents and living organisms in constant exchange, from surface to bed.
Zurfluh takes it as a model for the self, shaped by accumulated experience. The darker palette turns attention to the foundations from
which abundance grows: what lies beneath the surface continues to shape what flourishes above it.

Allison Zurfluh is a Swiss artist, raised in California, whose work draws on the ecology and cultural heritage of the Venetian Lagoon. From
her home in Burano to her studio on Isola Santa Cristina, she paints in oil, drawing on the tides, the wetlands and the traditions of lagoon
life. Her ongoing project Laguna Knitted explores the relationship between landscape and materiality.

Zurfluh is co-founder and president of Barena Association, a Basel-based non-profit protecting the Northern Venetian Lagoon and its
wetland ecosystems. She is also the founder of Studio Barena, an initiative to establish a permanent home on Burano for contemporary
art, cultural exchange and environmental engagement.

Barena: salt marshes of the Venetian Lagoon