IRL Gallery is pleased to present Where Silence Rules And Flowers Sleep, a focused solo presentation of new paintings by New Orleans–based artist Kevin Zabasky. Marking his second exhibition with the gallery, this show brings together a curated selection of recent works installed in the gallery’s viewing room.

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Working with gouache, charcoal, and pastel on raw canvas, Zabasky develops scenes that hover between interior and exterior spaces — figures in quiet moments, nocturnal landscapes, and fragments of everyday life rendered through softened contours and atmospheric color. His compositions balance intimacy and distance, where memory, observation, and imagination dissolve into one another through layered surfaces and muted tonal shifts.

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This new body of work deepens the artist’s exploration of stillness and emotional suspension, inviting viewers into contemplative spaces where narrative remains open and time feels slowed.

ARTIST BIO

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Kevin Zabasky (b. 1987, Louisiana) is a self-taught artist living and working in New Orleans. His practice explores themes of childhood, memory, and personal mythology, using painting as a space where storytelling, introspection, and visual ambiguity intersect. Originally drawn to theology and philosophical inquiry, Zabasky approaches image-making as a way to examine identity, belief, and the emotional residue of lived experience.

Working primarily on raw, unprimed canvas with gouache, oil, and pastel, Zabasky develops surfaces that are softened, washed out, and partially erased, allowing forms to emerge and dissolve simultaneously. His compositions often oscillate between figuration and abstraction, blending references to art history with intimate, autobiographical fragments. Through this process, his paintings evoke the instability of memory — images that feel familiar yet elusive, suspended between presence and disappearance.

In addition to his studio practice, Zabasky has worked as an art instructor in the Dallas public school system for over a decade. His work has been exhibited internationally, with recent exhibitions including I am All That Has Been and Is And Shall Be at IRL Gallery, New York (2025), The Anatomy of Conflict at Plan X Gallery (2023), and A Long Way From Home with Delphian Gallery, London (2019). He was also featured in the 2025 edition of the Marfa Invitational.