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Zack ZdralePersuader - Original oil painting - Zack Zdrale2025
2025
$9,000
£7,012.75
€7,955.75
CA$12,935.02
A$14,242.71
CHF 7,385.47
MX$168,672.80
NOK 93,753.76
SEK 87,623.51
DKK 59,420
About the Item
This painting captures a moment of reckoning—the body collapsing toward the earth, fists clenched in a visceral acknowledgment of defeat. The figure’s surrender is both physical and emotional, grounded and humbled.
Zdrale’s abstracted brushwork blurs the body’s edges, allowing form to dissolve into atmosphere. This merging of figure and ground mirrors the act of letting go—the erosion of control, the acceptance of mortality. In both gesture and paint, Ground Puncher embodies the futility of resistance and the quiet clarity that follows surrender.
In Persuader, Zdrale presents a bare-chested figure thrust forward in physical exertion, muscles charged and arms extended, yet no rope binds or restrains him. The absence of that recurring motif—so prominent in the Let Go paintings—marks a psychological shift. Here, resistance persists, but it is no longer tethered to a visible source. The struggle has become internalized.
Where the figures in Let Go 1, 2, 3 strain visibly against ropes—symbols of control, fear, and attachment—Persuader depicts a man grappling with emptiness itself, his hands shaping or perhaps arguing with the unseen. The gesture feels almost communicative, as though he is trying to reason with an invisible force, to negotiate with his own turmoil. The tension is not between man and rope but between man and meaning.
The fiery, ochre-red palette amplifies this confrontation, radiating heat and urgency. Yet, without the rope, the act of persuasion becomes futile and poignant—an attempt to command the intangible. Zdrale’s phrase “persistent resistance” is embodied not in bondage but in the refusal to accept stillness. The result is a painting caught between defiance and surrender: the moment just before understanding that the struggle itself is self-made.
Zack Zdrale
Persuader, 2025
oil on panel
28h x 32w in
71.12h x 81.28w cm
ZKZ023
Zdrale is originally from Wisconsin. He attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, earning a Bachelor of Science-Art degree in 1999. His training culminated in a Master's degree in figurative painting from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He graduated with honors and now teaches in the Graduate Fine Art Department.
- Creator:Zack Zdrale (1977)
- Creation Year:2025
- Dimensions:Height: 48 in (121.92 cm)Width: 32 in (81.28 cm)Depth: 1 in (2.54 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Chicago, IL
- Reference Number:Seller: ZKZ0241stDibs: LU554317184892
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