Zack Zublena Selected by Singulart: A North American Artist to Follow in Washington, DC
Singulart has selected Zack Zublena among its curated North American Artists to Follow.
The French artist and fine art photographer brings a distinctive visual language built around gold, light, movement and the human figure.
Based in Los Angeles, Zublena works at the intersection of fine art photography, performance and contemporary sculpture. For Washington, DC, a capital of great museums, embassies and collectors, Singulart's selection introduces golden figures made for its townhouses, residences and hotels.
Golden Yoga Prayer explores the human body as a sculptural and contemplative form. The golden figure is transformed by light, creating an image that exists somewhere between photography, sculpture and symbolic portraiture.
In a Washington interior, from a Georgetown townhouse to a Kalorama residence near Embassy Row or a home in Spring Valley, the work becomes a point of stillness within the pace of the capital: an artwork, a sculptural presence and a quiet visual anchor.
Our Curation of North American Artists to Follow
Discover Zack Zublena featured by Singulart alongside selected contemporary artists from North America.
Washington, DC: A Capital of Great Museums and Collectors
Washington, DC holds one of the richest concentrations of art museums in the world. Along the National Mall, in Dupont Circle and Georgetown, and in the galleries of the 14th Street corridor, the city brings together collectors, diplomats, curators and designers with a deep appreciation for art.
The National Gallery of Art, the National Portrait Gallery, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and The Phillips Collection shape a cultural landscape in which photography, painting, portraiture and sculpture are in constant dialogue, a dialogue followed closely by the arts pages of The Washington Post.
Within this wider North American art landscape, Singulart's selection of Zack Zublena highlights a practice that connects photography with the physicality of sculpture and performance.
Founded in 1921, The Phillips Collection became America's first museum of modern art. Today, from the sculpture garden of the Hirshhorn to the portraits of the National Portrait Gallery and the landscape and pavilions of Glenstone in nearby Potomac, the capital region offers a natural context for Zack Zublena's hybrid language of photography, performance, portraiture and sculptural form.
Gold as a Visual Language
Gold is one of the defining elements of Zack Zublena's artistic vocabulary. Throughout art history, gold has been associated with light, value, power, spirituality and the timeless. In Washington, gold shines in two of the city's most extraordinary interiors: the gilded Great Hall of the Library of Congress, and Whistler's Peacock Room, its walls painted in gold leaf, at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art.
Zublena brings these associations into contemporary fine art photography by applying reflective gold directly to the human figure. Skin becomes reflective, movement becomes sculptural and the body appears to move beyond ordinary representation.
In Washington, where golden hour warms the marble of the monuments, light plays on the Potomac and spring brings the soft glow of the cherry blossoms, gold behaves like a mirror for the city itself: it catches light, holds it and returns it to the room.
From Bowing to Freedom: Performance and Sculpture
In Silent Power: The Bowing Shadow in Gold, the body becomes an instrument for expressing an idea rather than an identity.
The gesture of bowing can suggest submission, respect, introspection or surrender. Yet within Zublena's wider visual language, physical restraint can also become a metaphor for freedom. This ambiguity gives the work its power: a single gesture holds several meanings, and the viewer takes part in the interpretation.
Washington knows this territory well. From The Washington Ballet to Arena Stage and the Shakespeare Theatre Company, the capital has long celebrated performance and the body in movement as forms of art.
The Bow Is Mine answers the same gesture from another angle. Folded into himself, the golden male figure turns a bow into an act of ownership rather than submission: a moment of inner strength, chosen and held. Light gathers along the spine and shoulders, and the body becomes a single sculptural curve.
Golden Yoga Duo expands Zublena's exploration of the human body through the relationship between two golden figures.
The poses create a visual balance between stillness and movement. Yoga introduces a vocabulary of concentration, balance and inner movement, qualities Washingtonians seek in morning practice along the Georgetown Waterfront or on the open lawns of the National Mall.
With the Golden Male & Female Diptych, the dialogue between two figures becomes a dialogue between the masculine and the feminine. Hung side by side in the drawing room of a Federal-style townhouse or a contemporary residence in Chevy Chase, the two panels answer each other: strength and grace, line and curve, two presences that are complete on their own and even stronger together.
From the Human Figure to the Cosmic
In Supernova / Genesis / Before the First Leaf, the relationship between the human figure and the cosmic becomes particularly pronounced.
The title suggests origins, expansion and the emergence of life. The golden figure can be read simultaneously as a human body and as something larger: a fragment of a celestial landscape, a symbolic form emerging from darkness.
Washingtonians know this sense of scale. At the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, the story of humanity's journey to the stars unfolds, from the first flights to the Moon landings. Here, the human figure meets the vastness of the universe, and the body becomes a point of departure for imagining another state of being.
Axis of Freedom — Golden Balance extends this exploration through a triptych composition in which balance, symmetry and bodily control become central visual elements.
Presented on a long wall in a Navy Yard loft or in the lobby of a historic hotel such as The Hay-Adams, the triptych creates a visual rhythm that changes with the viewer's position. The three photographic moments function almost like a contemporary sequence of movement frozen in space.
After movement comes stillness. In Sacred Devotion, a single golden figure gathers into a pose of quiet devotion, hands joined, body still. It is the most intimate image of the series: a pilgrim at rest, holding light rather than reflecting it, and a calm, contemplative presence for a Kalorama bedroom, a private library or a quiet room far from the rhythm of the capital.
Zack Zublena: Fine Art Photography in the Washington, DC Landscape
Washington holds a unique place in the history of photography. The Library of Congress preserves one of the largest photographic archives in the world, and the National Gallery of Art has built a major collection of photographs spanning the history of the medium.
For photography collectors, the city also offers FotoWeekDC, its annual celebration of photography, and galleries in Georgetown and along 14th Street where photographic prints are treated as collectible fine art rather than commercial imagery.
Zublena's work enters this conversation from a distinctive position. His photographs begin with the physical body, but the final image is constructed through performance, gold body paint, sculptural lighting and careful composition. Rooted in Fine Art Photography Los Angeles and created as Exclusive Art for Los Angeles Interiors, his work, now featured by Singulart, finds a natural place in Washington residences, embassies and hotels.
Washington is also home to FotoWeekDC, the photography collections of the National Gallery of Art and the archives of the Library of Congress, reinforcing the capital's long-standing relationship with fine art photography and collectible photographic prints.
Zack Zublena and the Washington, DC Art Experience
In Washington, art lives everywhere: in museums and galleries, but also in embassies, hotel lobbies, private clubs, restaurants in Georgetown and residences from Kalorama to Potomac and McLean. An artwork can move naturally between a private collection, a luxury hotel, a diplomatic residence and a gallery wall.
This fluidity is central to Zack Zublena's practice. His gold figures can appear monumental and intimate at the same time, making them particularly suited to Washington interiors where historic architecture meets contemporary design: from a Georgetown townhouse to a Wharf residence or a hotel such as The Jefferson.
For Washington collectors and interior designers, the work offers another way of experiencing photography: not simply as an image on a wall, but as a luminous physical presence within a space.
Read Zack Zublena's Singulart Feature
Discover the Singulart selection and explore Zack Zublena alongside contemporary artists selected from the North American art scene.
Zack Zublena — French Artist & Fine Art Photographer · Los Angeles
