Joe Zucker, "Empire Descending a Staircase"

Zucker's style could be called Folk-Pop deconstruction, whereby eccentric techniques—such as applying acrylic-soaked cotton wads in lieu of brushstrokes—are used to cartoonishly distill images into grids. In his latest series —a Cubist-Deco homage to Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase—Doric columns or colonnades receive this sort of treatment, with gypsum board taking the place of canvas. Zucker systematically peels away the drywall's paper layer to expose "pixels" of plaster, which he then colors with grisaille aquarelles in a mash-up of 8-bit graphics and Roman fresco.