Zoe Ilić- Murmuration

Thursday, April 17th from 6 to 9 pm: Reception for the artist Zoe Ilić

Zoe Ilić’s first solo exhibition Murmuration showcases a series of new works created between October 2024 and April 2025. Using pyrography, Ilić meticulously burns hand-replicated marks into wood panels, forming geometric shapes and organic patterns. The shapes found throughout Ilić’s work – spirals, matrices, and the “X” – are created with intuitive gestures, spurring a dialogue between structure and spontaneity within the work. Their process is both additive and subtractive—painting, staining, and drawing before burning into the surface to build layered textures and depth. Motifs such as a car, horse, and devil figure playfully nod to the folk art roots of wood burning. Ilić’s central concept – murmuration – references a flock of birds flying together in a swirling, shape-shifting pattern. Meaning here is found in parts that make a whole; a murmuration of marks forms an artwork, a murmuration of panels forms an exhibition. The result is a series of works that pulse with motion, yet are frozen in time; Ilić captures the aching distance between forms that seem to reach for one another but never connect.

Zoe Ilić is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Ilić received their BA in Visual Arts from Bennington College in 2021. Their work has been exhibited at Halsey McKay Gallery, Godspeed Arts, and Usdan Gallery. 

Special thanks to Rayna Berggren, Rosemary Haynes, Ruby Beenhouwer, Mathangi Mills Raghavan, Gorazd Poposki, and Gallery MC.