In 1970, he began exploring Abstract Reductive Formalism and representational painting, however he first gained attention for his counterfeit parking signs with oddly cryptic messages installed on Los Angeles streets.
Critical acclaim soon followed for his minimalist abstractions that combined elemental geometric forms with evocations of "smiley" faces, stick figures, and other rudimentary imagery.
In 1989, his painting Zarathustra’s Cave II was purchased by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) for its permanent collection.
[7] In 2011, Flag Stop Art Fair had a major survey of Zoell's work called Pictures and Words, curated by Howard Fox of LACMA.
[7] "For the past thirty years, the L.A.-based painter, whose work constantly pushes at the boundaries of this medium, has sought to get beyond the comforts of what has been done before so that something unforeseen might take shape—with greater clarity and precision than previously imagined, much less conceived."
[1][9] In 2010, he installed “bFiLrYd” (Bird Fly), a glass curtain wall on permanent display in the San Francisco International Airport.
In 2020, he installed a mural at PS 464 Elementary School in Manhattan, commissioned by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.