OCHI
MATTHEW F FISHER
Born 1976, Boston, MA Lives and works in New York, NY
EDUCATION
2000 Virginia Commonwealth University, Master of Fine Arts 1998 Columbus College of Art and Design, Bachelor of Fine Arts
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2021 The Hole, Hamptons, NY (forthcoming) Seas, Ochi Projects, Los Angeles, CA
2020 The Great Fire, SHRINE, New York, NY Four Seasons: A Solo Show, Deanna Evans Project, New York, NY The Sameness of Everyday, Taymour Grahne, London, UK
2019 After the Ice, Taymour Granhe, London, UK Soft Nature, Ochi Projects, Los Angeles, CA
2018 Into the Blue, Johansson Projects, Oakland, CA Strange Light, Over Under Room, Brooklyn, NY
2017 Observable Universe, Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York, NY Hello Sea, One River School, Englewood, NJ
2016 Sun, Stars, Sea, and Moon, Airlock Gallery, San Marcos, CA Ten Years, Curated by Jon Lutz, Spring/Break, New York, NY
2015 Black Water Don’t Shine Like the Moon, Sardine, Brooklyn, NY
2014 If You Ain’t a Reflection, You’re a Wave, Ampersand Gallery, Portland, OR
2013 Goodnight nobody, Weird Days, Brooklyn, NY
2012 Asea, Aloof, Mulherin+Pollard Projects, NY, NY
2010 Lost Time, Heskin Contemporary, New York, NY, (catalog)
2009 Lonesome George, ADA Gallery, Richmond, VA Forever Is, RARE, New York, NY
2006 Letting Go, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA While You Where Away, ADA Gallery, Richmond, VA
2005 Paintings, Stephanie Theodore at SCOPE, New York, NY
OCHI
2004 Drawings and Paintings, Spector Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
SELECTED TWO-PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2019 Tow Jalopies, with Carl D’Alvia, Drive By Projects, Watertown, MA
2018 Night Waves, with Casey Cook, SHRINE, New York, NY
2017 The Perfect Order of Randomness, with Julie Curtiss, Monya Rowe Gallery, St. Augustine, FL
2016 Artificial Son, with Kyle Breitenbach, Left Field, San Luis Obispo, CA
2015 The World Outside, with Ryan Schneider, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA
2012 Golden Beams of a Laughing Sun, with Rob Matthews, Twist Gallery, Nashville, TN
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2021 The Fiction, Gallery Func, Shanghai, China Ridiculous Sublime, SFA Art Advisory, New York, NY Oasis, The Pit, Palm Springs, CA Nature Morte, The Hole, New York, NY Glyphadelphia, curated by Carl D’Alvia, Hesse Flatow, New York, NY
2019 Paper Views, The Hole, New York, NY
2018 Fiery Rain and Movies, Cooling Sun, SEASON, Seattle, WA The Politics of Pink?, The Dot Project, London, UK The Jules Olitski Project, curated by Dr. Vittorio Colaizzi, Baron and Ellin Gordon Art Gallery, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA Nothing But Good Live II, Park, Tilburg, The Netherlands
2017 Provisional Landscape, Barbara Walters Gallery, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY Through the Art of Painting, Deanna Evans Projects, Brooklyn, NY In Paper We Trust, The Dot Project, London, UK Group Portrait, Unisex Salon, Brooklyn, NY When Y was thus Released, Ampersand Gallery, Portland, OR Somewhere, curated by 106 Green, Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA The Twenty by Sixteen Biennial, curated by Geoffrey Young, Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY Pro Forma: Context and Meaning in Abstraction, curated by Dr. Vittorio Colaizzi, Work Release, Norfolk, VA (catalogue)
2016 In Which We Dwell, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AT Magic, Mercer County Collage, West Windsor, NJ Lunacy, curated by Eric Hibit, OyG Projects, Brooklyn, NY Solar Vortex, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA Finding Your Way, Monya Rowe Gallery, St. Augustine, FL Sensorium, Kravets Wehby Gallery, New York, NY OCHI
Pink and Green, Eddy’s Room, Brooklyn, NY Casino Cabaret, curated by Melissa Brown, Safe Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2015 The River Keeps Talking, Ampersand Gallery, Portland, OR Image is Everything, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA The Ocean is Double Sided, SEASON, Seattle, WA Let’s GO Away for Awhile, curated by Erik den Breejen and Maris Calandra, One Mile Gallery, Kingston, NY I Am What I Am Not Yet, curated by Diana Buckley, Madelyn Jordon Fine Art Gallery, curated by Diana Buckley, Scarsdale, NY New Narratives, Storefront Ten Eyck, Brooklyn, NY
2014 Quiet Please, RARE Gallery, New York, NY Transcendent Landscapes, Drive By Projects, Watertown, MA Not a Force But a Curvature, curated by Ryan Schneider, Novella Gallery, New York, NY Interchange, Goldie Paley Gallery, Moore College of Art, Philadelphia, PA Nothing But Good, Park, Tilburg, The Netherlands
2013 Endless Summer, curated by Gary Peterson, Brain Morris Gallery, New York, NY Thirsty, ADA Gallery, Richmond, VA Hypertrophic Visions, curated by Robin Reisenfeld, New York Center for Arts & Media Studies, New York, NY (catalogue) Hydroflow, Goucher College, Baltimore, MD, (catalogue) LAND, HO!, curated by Holly Coulis and Ridley Howard, VCU Fine Arts Gallery, Richmond, VA Chiaroscuro, Novella Gallery, New York, NY Ears Nose and Throat, WILDLIFE, Brooklyn, NY Nearly Neutral, Barbara Walters Gallery, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY (catalogue)
2012 I glove U, curated by Ridley Howard and Ester Partegas, Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA Intramurals, AFA Gallery, Scranton, PA
2011 Southern Cross, Grizzly Grizzly, Philadelphia, PA Captured (A Portrait Show), Heskin Contemporary, New York, NY The Nature of Drawing, Dowling College, Oakdale, NY All My Friends, Small Black Door, Ridgewood, NY
2010 Flat Earth, Winona State University, Winona, MN New Narrative, curated by John Serdula, Heskin Contemporary, New York, NY Folksmusic, curated by Jon Lutz, Daily Operation, Brooklyn, NY Natural Reaction, curated by Elizabeth Heskin, Metropolitan Green, Brooklyn, NY
2009 Ripple Effect, The Athenaeum, Alexandria, VA Beautiful Human, curated by Shelley Spector, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College, Haverford, PA (catalogue) Vintage Violence, Space 414, Brooklyn, NY
2008 Political Winter Redux, curated by Dr. Yolande Trincere, Molloy College, Rockville Center, NY (catalogue) The Drawing Narrative, Jenny Jansky Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, (catalogue) OCHI
The Indigenous Visitor, Heskin Contemporary, New York, NY Spot Check: Academy Contemporary, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, PA
2007 The Colonial Show, curated by Leah Stoddard, Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, VA (catalogue) The Comic Uncanny, curated by Stephanie Theodore, Shaheen Modern & Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH This Place is Ours! Recent Acquisitions at the Academy, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA In Summer, The Song Sings Itself, Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, PA One Day I Will Control the Sun, The Arsenal Gallery in Central Park, New York, NY Trash Menagerie, Drake Hotel, Toronto, Canada
2006 Posture and Expression, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
2005 Hello Sunday, curated by Holly Coulis, Sixtyseven Gallery, New York, NY Casper David Séance, Jack the Pelican Presents, Brooklyn, NY Drawing for It 2, Spector Gallery, Philadelphia, PA Introspective Men, curated by David Kefford, Madder 139, London, England Operation RAW, Icebox Gallery, Philadelphia, PA Sasquatch Society, Sixtyseven Gallery, New York, NY Honeymoon With Romeo, curated by Holly Coulis, Groeflin Maag Galerie, Basel, Switzerland Folklore for a New Millennium, Lawrence Asher Gallery, Los Angles, CA Pencil on Glass, Sushi Art at Voz Alta Project, San Diego, CA
2004 The Great (Re)Masters, Spector Gallery, Philadelphia, PA AC, Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York, NY Pictionary, curated by Andy Cross, Kravets/Wehby Gallery, New York, NY Toys in the Attic, curated by Stephanie Theodore, Lennon Weinberg Inc., New York, NY Death to the Fascist Insect That Preys on the Life of the People, Gallery 800, Brooklyn, NY This is for Real: War and the Contemporary Audience, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY
2003 The Winter Show, The Painting Center, New York, NY The Next, SPACE Gallery, Portland, ME Homeland Security, 450 Broadway Gallery, New York, NY
AWARDS & RESIDENCIES
2018 Pasaquan, Buena Vista, GA 2016 Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant 2015 Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY 2010 Painting Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts 2007 Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY 2005 Full Fellowship, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT Millay Colony for the Arts, Austerlitz, NY Vermont Studio Center, Full Fellowship, Johnson, VT
OCHI
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
New York City Department of Education, Public Art for Public Schools Fidelity Investments, Boston, MA Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA Dogfish Brewery, Milton, DE
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS & PRESS
2021 Hazani, Joseph. “Seas by Matthew F Fisher @ Ochi Projects,” a dilettante, Jul. 2 Brindza, Csaba. “Matthew F Fisher,” You wanted a list, Jun. 2020 Lopez, Juliana. “5 Artists to Follow if You Like Georgia O’Keeffe,” Artsy, Oct. 14 Feldmann, Kim. “Drawing Everything Out Of Nothing,” Surf Simply Magazine, May 2019 Salvadó, Arnau. “Abstract Nature,” Metal Magazine, Feb. 2018 “Over Under Room Interview: Matthew F Fisher,” Pilgrim, Nov. 9 Monro, Lara. “Pastel Hues and Mesmerising Blues,” Dateagle Art, Dec. 19 Leiman, Layla. “Paintings of Tomorrow Viewed from Today by Matthew F Fisher,” ArtMaze Magazine Ehrlich, Madeline. “Thursday Spotlight: Life After Greenpoint, Catching Up With Matthew F Fisher,” Greenpointers, Feb. 1 Bogojev, Sasha. “Matthew F Fisher’s Portraits of Beachscapes in ‘Into the Blue,’” Juxtapoz, 2017 Maziar, Paul. “Taking from Life: My Phone Call with Matthew F Fisher,” Whitehot Magazine, Dec. 2015 Maziar, Paul. “A Complete Eye of Water: A Summer Show at Ampersand Gallery,” ArtCritical, Sep. 19 Burbank, Megan. “Properties of Water in The River Keeps Talking,” Portland Mercury, Aug. 19 Wolin, Joseph. ‘Art Review,’ Time Out New York, Iss. 989, Feb. 12-18 New American Painters, Iss. 116 2014 MacQuaid, Cate. “David X. Levine mines nostalgia for ‘John Surette,’” Boston Globe, Oct. 8 “Matthew F Fisher: Black Water Don’t Shine Like the Moon,” TimeOut New York, Aug. 19 Newhall, Edith. “A Fine Show of Something Else,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Aug. 10 Howard, Ridley. “If You Ain’t a Reflection, You’re a Wave: Interview With Matthew Fisher,” The Huffington Post, Mar. 14 2013 McClemont, Doug. “Endless Summer,” ArtNews, Dec. 2010 Kozlowski, Andy. “Matthew Fisher,” Art Papers, pp59-60, Mar.-Apr. 2009 Wolin, Joseph R. “Critic Picks,” Artforum, Apr. 26 Newhall, Edith. “Galleries: Six Artists Shine a Light on the Human Image,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Sep. 27 2008 Newhall, Edith. “Drawing on Their Love For the Illustrative Art,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, pW24, May 23 Utter, Douglas Max. “The Comic Uncanny,” Art Papers, pp56-57, Mar./Apr. Parsons, Laura. “Historical Revision: Colonial Iconoclasm,” The Hook, Jan. 3 Trincere, Yolande. Political Winter Redux (catalogue) 2007 Fallon, Roberta. “Breezy Does It,” Philadelphia Weekly, Jul. 11 Rapa, Patrick. “In Summer, the Song Sings Itself.” Philadelphia City Paper, p28, Jul. 5-12 “The Top 600 Websites Ever in the Universe (in 2008),” NY Arts, Nov./Dec. Stoddard, Leah. “Introduction: Why Colonial Now?” The Colonial Show (catalogue) Strauss, R.B. “Some First Friday Jewels for July,” University City Review, p11, Jul. 4 2006 New American Paintings, Iss. 62 OCHI
2005 “Art Listings: East End,” Time Out London, Iss. 1833, p48, Oct. 5-12 Nüsseler, Hannes. “Honeymoon with Romeo,” Basler Zeitung, p23, Aug. 11 “Art Listings: Chelsea & vicinity,” Time Out New York, Iss. 464, p64, Aug. 19 “Art Listings: East End,” Time Out London, Iss. 1833, p48, Oct. 5-12 Butler, Sharon. “Sneaky Funny in Ridgewood,” Two Coats of Paint, Nov. 19 2004 Cotter, Holland. “Death to the Fascist Insect That Prey on the Life of the People,” New York Times, pE33, Jun. 25 Johnson, Ken. “Toys in the Attic,” New York Times, pE34, Jul. 30 Fallon, Roberta. “Romance Language,” Philadelphia Weekly, Oct. 27 Oxford American, Iss. 66, p137 Fallon, Roberta. “Copy Right,” Philadelphia Weekly, p42, Dec. 1-7
OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
July 2021 | By Csaba Brindza
Matthew F Fisher paints idealized scenes of nature that appear suspended in time, such as a perfectly uniform wave at its peak just before breaking. Based in New York City for the last 20 plus years, with a long 18 month weekend in LA around 2018, he has focused exclusive on the landscape as motif since 2011.
What was your latest book discovery? What are your favorite books of all time?
My paintings are often talked about as being Surrealist, so I picked up Roger Cardinal and Robert Stuart Short's 1970 survey on the Surrealist movement from a thrift store. I am most drawn right now to the surrealism of the 1940's, particularly in America with the works of Rothko, Newman, Gottlieb, and Gertrude Abercrombie.
Most visited blogs, websites?
Wikipedia. I love information and there's no end to that on Wikipedia.
Most recent internet searches?
Phantom island. A land mass which was included on maps for a period of time, but was later found not to exist - a Wikipedia search.
What apps do you use the most and why?
Instagram is still king. It is a community, that at its best, keeps us all connected. I share in the joy of @season.cz opening a new space in Seattle, or news from my friends in Hong Kong, London, Nashville, everywhere.
I recently had an opening at @ochiprojectsla that I was unable to travel to for opening night, it was fun to watch the event unfold on the phone as I drank a beer at the kitchen table. OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
What’s currently on your playlist?
For the better part of two decades, it's been almost all Lambchop, Yo La Tango, and The Clientele. The celebration of the everyday with their lyrics continues to excite me.
What albums would you recommend others listen to?
I love The Clientele's It's Art Dad. An album's worth of songs recorded before any officially released material and then shelved for almost a decade.
I have also just enjoyed letting the iTunes go random. The ease in which we can collect music these days, the shuffle is a nice way to remember songs or bands you liked, added, and then forgotten you liked and added to your library.
Which artists working today do you admire most?
There are so many great painters out there right now. I have always loved Michele Hemsoth's positive negative abstractions that are serious and funny at the same time. Japeth Mennes's continues his exploitation into object, icon, abstraction, with his wonderfully rich paintings of painted windows, mailboxes, and washing machines. Maria Calandra's thickly layered depictions of remote nature scenes with high key colors and all over patterning are super stunning, like seeing in another wave length.
What are some of your tv top tips right now?
High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America on Netflix is a must watch.
Who are you following?
@seinfeld_ambience is a wonder feed of background images from the show that when cropped become abstract and narrativeless.
OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
A newsletter worth subscribing to?
Weisslink - a daily email with a collection of art related news stories and other interesting tidbits.
What tools do you use in your work?
Brushes, tape, toothbrushes. I love using my hands and being surprised by the images I create.
What magazines / newspapers do you read regularly?
New York Times, New Yorker, I also love finding old magazines and reading them, exotically old art magazines. Some of the issues are only 45-50 years old, but so much has changed and been forgotten. It's fun to relive those moments in a printed form.
What are your favorite gadgets?
I am loving LIVSN flex canvas pants and am super excited for d'emploi new line dropping soon. A Brooklyn based designer; his products are always so much fun.
Best online buys lately?
Modernist teak frames on eBay.
OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
‘SEAS’ BY MATTHEW F FISHER @ OCHI PROJECTS
July 2, 2021 | By Joseph Hazani
Pictures do not do justice to the fastidiousness of Mr. Fisher’s new exhibition Seas at Ochi Projects. The minute yet impeccably mastered compositions – most are painted under one and a half square feet – have one confident theme: the sea and its arrival to shore. One might imagine the subject matter to be derivative, as if the countless other artists who have felt enthused to capture immemorially what pervades the Planet have not accomplished sufficient evidence of its natural beauty. Yet Mr. Fisher’s treatment is one which takes care to aim for a distillation of the concept of sea.
Yes, water appears. But there is also the life forms and the buttressed sands which complement our idea of a day at the beach. These do not appear redundant in their imagery, in that, this is not an attempt at still-life. This is no realism, but a daydream of the simplicity of that vital color and its further vital counterparts. We need, for instance, a horizon, to complete our concept of what is true. And it is thrilling to see how gently yet masterly Mr. Fisher is in his composition of this most basic of representations of the aquarian.
He does not tire in his manifestations within each piece. Settling with a simple white form of the horizon provides the artist the opportunity to explore his imagination with what are necessary attributes: waves, sand, and stars. The real challenge, then, is in how many ways he can portray the blue which saturates our idea of the sea. This exhibition itself is a worthy study of gradient in color – there is a bounty of blue characteristic of each work. And stupendously, Mr. Fisher does not disappoint in his obsession with creating novelty.
And this novelty is most extensive in the titles to his pieces. Helping to separate the compositions from one another, the artworks are cleverly awarded significance of wordless ideas which promote a sense of the permanent which is demonstrative of water’s ostensible infinitude on the planet – being a substance which has been Earthly for billions of years; truly out of the reach any human mind’s ability to conceive. Natural Law and Act of History, for instance, give us a clear sense of the geometrical magnitude and certainty of the sea. Elsewhere, By the Father’s Side, reverberates this same sense of paternal certainty and its unobstructive sense of fortification demonstrative in the piece’s clamshell on the shoreline – and its harmlessness from ruinous shackling – as a testimony to peace of mind being shaped by fatherly love; perhaps benefacted by an Eternal Creator?
Regardless, it is a joy to behold such an abundance of perspective on what can certainly be a permanent relation of our place on Earth. OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
5 Artists to Follow if You Like Georgia O’Keeffe Art Market | By Juliana Lopez Oct 14, 2020 3:10pm
Matthew F Fisher paints idealized scenes of nature that appear suspended in time, such as a perfectly uniform wave at its peak just before breaking. The meditative process through which he works is reflected in the calmness of his paintings. Fisher slowly and intentionally layers acrylic and ink onto the canvas, rendering objects with such dimension and volume that they appear sculptural against flat, gradient backgrounds.
Inspired by childhood memories of spending time near the water and contemplating the vastness of the ocean, Fisher often paints seascapes featuring recurring motifs such as seagulls, crustaceans, and the rising and setting sun. These symbols are rearranged in each painting to create new compositions and narratives.
Fisher received his MFA in 2000 from Virginia Commonwealth University. “The Great Fire,” a solo exhibition of his work, is currently on view at Shrine Gallery in New York through October 25th. He has shown internationally at Ochi Projects in Los Angeles and Taymour Grahne Projects in London, and has been the recipient of prestigious artist residencies such as the Pollock Krasner Foundation in 2016 and Yaddo in 2007 and 2015.
Left: Matthew F Fisher, The Candle and the Flame, 2018 Right: Matthew F Fisher, Orange and Yellow, 2018
OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
February 2019 | By Arnau Salvadó
“The true paradox of these paintings is that they really are about nothing. At the exact same time, they are about everything, which is the magic of abstract painting”, tells us Matthew F Fisher, whose exhibition Soft Nature is on view at Ochi Projects in Los Angeles until February 16. Get to know his sunsets, sunrises, blooming flowers, fish and giant rock – a beautiful portrayal of his “amazement of Mother Nature and her power.”
But where does this fascination come from? As animals who inhabit planet Earth, it should come as something natural to us but, unfortunately, urban life makes us alienated. “I moved from an urban setting to the rural countryside of Michigan when I was 9. Once there, I quickly realized that I had lost the proximity of my friends”, says the artist. “This forced me out of the house, into the woods, cornfields, streams where I fished, climbed trees, dug – did anything I could do to fill the time between breakfast and dinner”, he continues.
His paintings, nevertheless, are much more than just his memories and influences from a childhood split between Michigan and his “father oceanside shack on Long Island”, when the Internet wasn’t as widely spread, social media still didn’t exist, and couldn’t spend (or waste) all his time scrolling infinitely. “I yearn to be an abstract painter but have never been able to paint nothing unless I’m painting something. From the bands of empty skies, seas, and sand, to the obliques rock forums that seemingly occupy the whole the picture plane are examples of this of desire.”
The title of the exhibition, Soft Nature, “certainly refers to the colors, shapes, and motifs that I use within my paintings. I also hope it describes my personality and attitude as a person.” But OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM as Matthew reveals to us, there’s a curious story behind it. “Funny enough, I came across the phrase as it was the budget brand toilet paper supplied in my Inglewood studio building.” But his passion for finding expressions, phrases and interesting language is nothing new to him. “I am deeply intrigued by the idea of chance learning, or as I call it, ‘found knowledge’. I actively collect discarded dictionaries as an opportunity to have these chance encounters of found knowledge. Starting with a word or name, I go to that entry and allow the dictionary to speak to me”, he explains.
His artworks’ titles reflect this curiosity imbued with a sense of humour as well. “After meeting my studio neighbor, Will, a few months back, I looked up his name in the dictionary and came across the term ‘will-o’-the-wisp’, a nineteenth-century phenomenon created by the release of swamp gasses that causes a mirage of lights to form on the horizon. Often, travelers would leave the path to chase these distant lights thinking they were a house or city, only to find themselves hopelessly lost in the woods. After reading in depth about the term online, I couldn’t think of a more perfect title for the violet sunset painting I had just finished.”
When taking a closer look at his paintings, one can find many references, especially American. “Georgia O’Keeffe is a huge inspiration. She’s so great. I have always enjoyed how the objects in her paintings float above the landscapes, causing the familiarity of nature to be otherworldly”, he says. “The paintings of Roger Brown are another inspiration. The way he used the motif of the landscape as abstraction to create stacked space is so exciting”, he continues. But to him, it is important “to my own mental space to search out artists who make work, think, and create in completely different ways than myself. It’s all about the creation of the image, of how it’s made, that keeps me interested.”
OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
PASTEL HUES AND MESMERISING BLUES
DECEMBER 19, 2018 | LARA MONRO
Since moving to Los Angeles from New York in 2017, Matthew F Fisher’s paintings of nowhere beaches and organic forms continue to develop, as does their synergy with the sun-soaked city. Fisher’s distinctive horizon line paired with rock motifs, beach and sand are complimented by his colour palette, which is defined by his use of pastel hues and mesmerising blues. The artist celebrates his choice of imagery for being both universal yet deeply personal, and continues to follow the rule: ‘no layer will be painted only once’, which ultimately creates work that forms a unique density of colour and texture. Located on the West side of Los Angeles, Fisher’s studio is occupied by not only his art works and acrylic paint but also a number of discarded dictionaries, which he finds on the streets of Inglewood; a source of inspiration for titling his works. Referring to his studio as a laboratory, a place where he can conjure up new images from his mind, Fisher is currently preparing for his solo show ‘Soft Nature’ at Ochi Projects. DATEAGLE spent time with Fisher and his tropical Hawaiian shirt to learn more about his fascination in taking from life, and creating memories for future painting ideas.
Matthew F Fisher (b. 1976, Boston) received his BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design and his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Recent exhibitions include Over Under Room, Brooklyn, NY, Johansson Projects, Oakland, CA, SHRINE, New York, NY, Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York, NY, and Work Release, Norfolk, VA, amongst others. He is the recipient of residencies and awards from the Pollock Krasner Foundation, Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, among others. Matthew F Fisher is represented by Taymour Grahne Gallery, London, UK, and lives and works in Los Angeles, USA.
BACKGROUND & STUDIO
As a full-time artist are you typically in the studio Monday – Friday?
Most weeks find me in the studio on about 6 days. Balancing my partner’s creative schedule, you’ll find me there for about a half a day. We have a 2 year old who recently started nursery school, so I have been getting those school hours in the studio. Parenthood has forced me to make the most of my time, both inside the studio and outside of the studio. Not a wasted minute.
OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
Your works focus heavily on beach imagery paired with abstract landscapes – with this in mind, do you ever paint en plein air or always from memory, in the studio?
Although my work is a constant reference to the outside world, I’m not interested in the idea of painting directly from it. Rather, I am more intrigued by taking from life by creating memories for future painting ideas. Once back in the studio, I painstakingly translate these memories into a new image. The studio is my laboratory, a place where I can create something new from my head. That being said, there’s an importance to always being in the world, of always looking and seeing, keeping those memories fresh.
WORK
Can you talk me through your painting technique?
Acrylic was never taught to me in art school. It was always viewed as the lesser medium compared to oil, a paint without history. When I moved to NYC after college, I had a bucket full of acrylic paint. The thought of using solvents and oils in my small apartment seemed so unhealthy and annoying. Thus, I started to paint with what I had on hand. Through those early years, I taught myself how to make an acrylic painting. As I fumbled with the paint, I pulled from my art school training, mainly the techniques of watercolour class. I paint big to small. Starting with the furthest point away and working forward. Simply put, sky first, then water, sand, and object. I have a simple rule that no layer will be painted only once. This creates the unique density of colour and texture found within the work.
Can you tell me more about the imagery in your work, which is often occupied by planets and organic forms?
This body of work started out with the striking idea of making a painting about nothing. One morning in 2011, I simply drew a horizon line, sun, beach, and sand. When I stepped back, I realised that this image was everything to me. I enjoyed how the motif was both universal and deeply personal. I have taken this duality approach to all of my imagery, to be as open as possible with the readings while still being deeply personal. I have found this, for example in the image of a seagull – a bird that is everywhere in the world and, at the same time, nowhere. I am less interested in the depiction and history of any one exact breed of bird as I am in the idea of ‘bird’ and how the viewer responds to that.
You use a distinct palette, which often includes vivid pastel hues and mesmerising blues – is there a particular reason as to why you generally stick to specific colours?
When you paint a lot of sky and water works, blue is the natural colour choice. Of course, that makes it extra fun to not use blue to paint sky or water… The more pastel colours are my reaction to the L.A. sun.
You have an interesting approach to naming your titles; using discarded dictionaries. Can you tell me more about this unique process and how it came about?
Ha, thank you for phrasing it like that! I deeply enjoy the found knowledge of holding a dictionary, the whole world is actually in your hands. The internet is so, so vast, that becomes almost useless as a tool to search for titles. By starting with the dictionary and an impulse, I often can find a specific term, name, or word that interests me and relates to the painting, thus creating a new layer of meaning. This impulse is often a name or word that is on my mind. OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
Recently, I met my studio neighbour, Will. After he left the studio, I looked up ‘Will’ in the dictionary. In the process, I came across the term ‘will-o’-the-wisp’.It was an 18th century phantom of a ghost light appearing on the horizon at night, caused by the release of gas over a swamp. This light would often lead travellers off the path as they thought the light was a town or house in the distance. I looked at the painting I just finished off a sunset, and I couldn’t imagine a more perfect title. A title I would most likely never found, if not for this process.
You recently completed a residency at Passaquan through Columbus State University in Columbus, GA. Can you tell me how this has impacted your aesthetic and overall practice?
It was a deep pleasure and honour to be invited to Pasaquan by Columbus State University and spend a week surrounded by Eddie Owens Martin’s amazing environment. It was overwhelming at first, so strange, so out there. Not wanting to just appropriate his imagery into my own work, I worked as I would normally if I was at my home studio. After a few days of drawing, I had the idea to extend the outer circle from sun through the upper part of the drawn frame. By taking the imagery outside this frame, creating a larger circle, I saw that as my tribute to the mandalas that Martin had painted all over the buildings. A small but important reference to Pasquan that could only have been found by the time I spent working there.
Can you tell me more about the black rock motif that recurs in your work?
My original impulse was to be a shithead – how funny it is that this black rock occupies 90% of the picture plane creating a painting of nothing? The more I sat with the painting the more I started to understand the complexity of allowing this void to be the everything of the picture. There’s an extreme flat dimensional aspect that exists within all of my works. These rock paintings are the best example of this. At first, I struggled to figure out the structure of the ripples around the bottom of the rock. After many different failed starts, it occurred to me to make them as shallow as possible, as if the sea was a fax machine, and the rock was the incoming fax of a black square. This shallowness also counters the highly rendered texture found on the outer edge of the rock. These examples further empty out the void in the centre of the painting. This nothing is the everything of the painting.
Would you say that your practice has changed since moving from New York to Los Angeles?
In many ways it’s still the same: the studio is where I go to make art. But being here in L.A., one experiences the power of the sun daily, you can’t escape it. Unlike the south where it’s humid, or the desert where it’s hot as hell, L.A. is just right. You want to be outside all the time, all day. Quickly, this solar energy has fed into my work and attitude. I noticed an increased use of the colour yellow, a little dab to warm the whites, or those vivid pastels you mentioned earlier. Even though I don’t paint from life, this is a subtle reminder to me of how life creeps into the painting process.
You have a solo show at Ochi Project’s in January. Can you tell me about the body of works you have created for this show and your choice of titling?
The show is titled ‘Soft Nature’, a reference to the imagery within the work; as well, I hope, a reference to my own disposition. It is also the brand name of toilet paper in my studio building. I am big fan of chance and reason. After months of looking at this packaging, I knew I had my show title. The works for ‘Soft Nature’ are a continuation of my quest to paint everything through the zen of nothingness. I also have started to paint more objects, flowers, conch shells, and seagulls, to name a few. These paintings of things are a nice counter to the empty landscapes. OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
OVER UNDER ROOM INTERVIEW: MATTHEW F FISHER
Nov 09, 2018
Install shot from Matthew F Fisher’s solo show Strange Light at Over Under Room
Over Under Room: Hi Matt!
Matthew F Fisher: Good day Team Pilgrim, thank you for this opportunity to talk about the work.
OUR: Can you tell us a bit about where you grew up, what you were into as a kid, and how you first got into making art? Did you come from an artistically-inclined family or did you grow up in an environment where that was encouraged?
MFF: I have drawn for as long as I can remember. My earliest memories are of drawing Disney cartoons on my father’s college chalkboards. Later, it was copying MAD magazines illustrations followed by crappy high school surrealism--hell, there was a summer I drew nothing but tennis shoes. I was blessed to have parents who encouraged my artistic adventures and early on enrolled me in 4H and Saturday classes at the Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts. The first half of my youth was spent in urban Boston and Minneapolis with lots of friends living on my block. We were always playing and riding bikes together. At age 9, my family relocated to a farm in rural Michigan. I spent many hours outside playing by myself, experiencing nature one-on-one, just occupying my own mental space. In hindsight, I see this as the formative years of my creative urge. It forced me to make something out of nothing for my own entertainment.
OUR: Was there a particular moment when you decided or knew you’d want to pursue a career as an artist?
MFF: It was the photography classes at the Kalamazoo Institute for the Arts that honed my ability to process the world into a complete “image”. The directness of black and white OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM photography, of constantly looking, of mentally framing what I saw, figuring out the exposure, and then developing the film has had a lasting effect on my understanding of composition and balance within four edges of a the picture frame. Each roll of film was, in essence, 36 ideas that one could have over the course of an afternoon. If I was lucky, I would get one or two worth printing, a magical process unto itself. All those hours in the darkroom, physically handling the paper and developing the photo, always watching the clock, turning the enlarger on and off with my foot as I dodged and burned the image, started my lifetime appreciation of making and creating art with my own hands, even when machines and chemicals were deeply involved.
OUR: It’s interesting to observe the similarities and differences between your canvases and your works on paper, particularly with your approach to representing/portraying water, which can be such a tricky thing to render. Do your paintings on canvas usually start out as a sketch or a work on paper, or do you prefer to dive directly into a canvas?
MFF: The paintings and drawings have two very different vibes. The paintings act more like an epic saga, a novel with many chapters. The drawings are poems, fully thought out shorter versions. Both bodies of work are created through many, many layers of paint or ink, giving each work it’s unique richness of density. Still, the drawings act as independent thoughts, not necessarily sketches for paintings. I have found that translating the idea from a drawing to a painting prevents a growth and exploration that can only be found through the process of painting. A motif or idea found within the drawing can be the start of a new painting, but the seeing and feeling how the images play on the canvas is so important to the final work. Although the bodies of work are radically different, I appreciate your observations and understanding of their similarities. This is very important to me.
OUR: The scale and size of your work tends to vary from piece to piece and depending on medium. How do you decide on the scale of a piece and do you have a preference in terms of working large vs. small?
MFF: The drawings were mostly completed on found paper, particular the end pages of old books. That was the main factor in determining their scale. Books only come in certain sizes, after-all. But over the last year, I have returned to using art paper after becoming fed up the unpredictability of the found paper. I have tried to keep the sizes more unified over the years for the sake of consistency-- but as you can see in this show, that wasn’t fully the case. The very last drawing I completed for the show was determined by the size of an old frame. I was never happy with the older drawing, so I used this as a chance to swap it out with a newer work. It was surreal to finish the drawing, Today and Tomorrow, one hour before we left for our redeye to NYC. It was even stranger to be knocking at my framer’s door in Brooklyn, Ulfig Projects, the next morning, just 4 hours after we landed, and to have Wes mount the new drawing in the old frame “What, can’t find a framer in Los Angeles?”
OUR: It’s awesome that the whole family was able to make it out for the opening of this show. It was great meeting your son Ferdinand and seeing him run around the space and interact with your paintings. How’s being a father and how has it affected your art practice?
MFF: The short and honest answer is that it has caused be me more effective with my studio time. Being in the studio is already the most gluttonous thing one can do: alone, painting, just free to get lost in your thoughts and actions. That being said, fatherhood has enabled a deeper appreciation of my life away from the studio -- enhanced by watching Ferdinand grow every day and becoming more and more himself. Making art marks your days here on earth, and so does having a child. I am blessed to have both.
OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
Left: The Poetry of Saints, 2018, Ink and collage on toned paper, 6 x 8 inches. Right: Today and Tomorrow, 2018, Ink and collage on paper, 10 x 8 inches
OUR: Can you elaborate a bit on the title of this show, ‘Strange Light,’ and how that plays into these particular paintings and where you’re at in your art-making/life these days? Was the light something you were particularly aware of when you moved from BK to LA? Also, how’s the light in your studio out there?
MFF: Coming up with a show title is always a struggle, trying to find words or a phrase that encapsulates an entire thought behind a body of work is damn near impossible. But yes, the light here in LA is so strange, so wonderful, it can transform the most mundane of subjects into a rich visual experience. I also enjoy that moment when I realize that it is magic hour in the evening (or morning). As the day grows darker, there’s this window of 5-15 minutes were the world is illuminated in a soft, warm, indirect light, as if the light originated from beneath your feet. In those fleeting minutes, I reflect on the day that was and the tomorrow to come. Since most of the works in the show involve suns, moons, stars, I felt the title was also a homage to this idea of light and creation.
My studio has a skylight, but no windows. Depending on the LAX flight patterns, an airplane’s shadow will occasionally pass directly overhead, casting a momentary shadow across the studio. At first, when the painting in front of me would go dark, I assumed I had blown a fuse, causing all the studio lights to go off. After many months of this, I have grown to love this man- made eclipse. It is a reminder that the world is always moving, people are coming and going, independent of whatever I am doing in my studio.
OUR: Can you give the world a little insight into the artists who inspire you (whether it’s some contemporaries of yours or artists whose work you studied while in school)? Do you like to listen to music or radio while working in the studio? What have you been listening to lately?
MFF: The Chicago Imagist Roger Brown has long been my biggest artistic hero. His use of landscape painting as abstraction, of stacked and flattened space, pattern, and personal humor have excited me since my undergrad days. In a way, it took me 13 years after my BFA thesis show to figure out how to take what Brown did and make it my own. Outside of that, I am attracted to paintings that I can’t explain and that often look very different than my own work. I
OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
Left: Install shot from Strange Light at Over Under Room. Right: The White Sea, 2018, Ink and collage on paper, 10 x 7.5 inches love painters who use paint: Gianna Commito, Elise Ferguson, Artist Chuckie, Alain Biltereyst, Morris Louis, Thomas Downing, Jim Lee, Rob Matthews, and Michele Hemsoth to name a few. Overwhelmingly, these are abstract painters, but I enjoy that. I take deep pleasure in contemplating their work, trying to reverse engine how they made what they made. Not knowing, in this strange way, is more powerful than knowing.
In the studio, it’s a lot of sports radio and NPR. I also listen to a lot of live sports on the radio, in particular baseball. Ted Leitner of the San Diego Padres is my studiomate, he calls one the smoothest games out there. Living in Los Angeles, my music game has been bolstered. So much great radio here. Garth Trinidad and Travis Holcombe of KCRW have introduced me to many new acts: Kevin Morby, Bombino, yaeji, Talaboman, Tonstartbandit, to name a few. And the label Sahel Sounds releases some of the greatest and rarest world music. Particular, Music from Saharan Cellphones is my absolute favorite driving soundtrack for bouncing around town. Especially the opening track by Group Anmataff gives one energy.
OUR: Final question(s): as you recently relocated from Brooklyn to LA, we’re wondering what in your opinion, is the best and worst thing about living in LA, and the thing you miss most and least about living in BK?
MFF: Driving is by far the worst part of living out here. It is a necessary evil in the sense that it’s how you get around. If living in NYC, one uses their iPhone earbuds to escape the outside world, here in LA, that headspace is the interior of the car itself. In a way, this is a perfect metaphor for the difference between both cities: more space, more air, more light, more time, more you.
Rarely does one have family that lives in NYC, so your close friends become extra special to you there. We miss those friends who are family to us. Social media and texting keeps you in touch easily, but are very poor substitutes for laughing and bending elbows in person. Also, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about getting lunch at Kalustyan's in Murray Hill with my friend Ahmed. I miss the ease that is the world of New York City.
OUR: What’s next for you? Any shows on the horizon?
MFF: Upcoming shows included Soft Nature, a solo presentation of new paintings at OCHI Projects in Los Angeles, opening 12 January 2019 and running through 16 February. I will also have my first solo show in Europe later next year with Taymour Grahne Gallery in London. OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
NIGHT WAVES Casey Cook + Matthew F Fisher April 20 - May 27, 2018 Night Waves is a dual exhibition pairing Casey Cook and Matthew F Fisher, two artists who translate the world around them by creating surreal, highly-graphic scenes that are enigmatic yet still true reflections of the intricacies of modern life. Cook and Fisher both shift expected notions of gender identity– Casey Cook delivers large-format, aggressively sexual canvases with sharp-edged lines and punk flair, while Matthew F Fisher meditates on the perpetual allure of nature in easel-scale paintings rendered in soft blue tones, pastel pinks and cream hues.
A repetition of hard geometric patterning combined with a seductive palette abstracts and diffuses the blunt erotic imagery presented in Casey Cook’s new works. Disembodied legs are wide-spread and emanating architectural forms suggestive of phallic towers and/or potent female sexual energy. Spiraling sea shells, bananas and blossoming flowers are re- contextualized into urgent emblems of the fluidity of human desire in a sea of controlled intimacy in the digital age.
Whether depicting ocean waves, electric sunsets or hyperreal creatures, Matthew F Fisher’s odes to the inexplicable beauty and inherent strangeness of life are disarming in their tranquil yet visionary presentation of the world around us. Taming uncontrollable forces in nature is a dominant aspect of Fisher’s work, which is achieved by removing the indelible movement and action that is key to our planet. Nature’s actions are frozen, as if stuck in time, resulting in a stillness that approaches Zen meditation despite layers of obsessive brushwork and highly rendered forms.
Casey Cook (b.1971) lives and works in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and received her BFA from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles and an MFA from The University of California. Cook has been exhibiting since 1995, with her most recent solo show being Geometric Desireat Light Art and Design in Chapel Hill, NC in 2015.
Matthew F Fisher (b. 1976) received a BFA from Columbus College of Fine Art and an MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles and has had recent solo exhibitions at Johansson Projects in Oakland, CA (2018) and Taymour Grahne (2017).
OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
Matthew F Fisher’s approach to painting is reverential. For Matthew, the ocean is a metaphor for the cosmos – vast, incomprehensible, terrifying and alluring. He returns to the same iconography of waves, gulls, crustaceans and the rising and setting sun again and again in his work, painting these motifs as a kind of meditation on life and the universe. Time is resoundingly absent in Matthew’s paintings; the ocean is frozen still and the laden sun hangs static and heavy in the sky. His style of painting has strong graphic cues that seem to render the chaotic orderly and knowable, but beneath the smooth saccharine colors is the disquieting understanding of this impossibility.
Nature has a strong sway on Matthew. He recently relocated from New York City to Los Angeles, and is fascinated by how the change of light, the presence of greenery and of course, the sea, have infused his work with a new luminosity. We chatted with Matthew about his studio practice, conceptual ideas and the nature of life as we know it.
AMM: Hi Matthew! To begin, can you please share a few of the milestones – good or bad – that have shaped your artistic journey thus far?
MF: “It’s better to burn out than to fade away” Neil Young once sang. Maybe in an art career, it’s better to slow burn than go up in a blaze? My milestones have been hard earned over the past 18 years. The achievements that I cherish the most include being invited to Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY, twice, with two different bodies of work. I have also been honored with a Pollock Krasner Grant, an immeasurable joy. Last summer, I worked with Public Art for Public Schools in New York City to have a mosaic made of one of my paintings that was permanently installed in a Brooklyn elementary school. The thought that this piece will be on public display forever is deeply rewarding. I have also had my fair share of bad experiences with gallerists that didn’t pay on time, misplaced work, or were generally unprofessional and untrustworthy. I learn best by doing and failing. I have been blessed to have the opportunities to show again and again and continue to learn. And sometimes I fail again; but I always learn from my mistakes and success.
AMM: In a group interview for a recent show that you participated in, you describe using pink in your work as a “way to paint the most natural of subjects, the landscape, in an other worldly way”. Please tell us more about your approach to color and how this manifests in your art. OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
MF: Color acts as the why to the what we see. How can the mood of a landscape change so dramatically just by the shift in colors within it? Color can tell you the time of the day, but it can also confuse that perception by appearing exaggerated or unnatural. I find painting to have a unique ability to not only distill, but also to expand what we see by how the subject is presented. These colors might appear unreal in our sense of now, but that does not mean they have never existed, or can’t exist. Our memory can play funny tricks, enhancing moments while at other times reducing them. Influenced by our current state, we perceive the truth to be what we see. I use color to help challenge that trust while providing a sense, or assumption, of familiarity through the imagery.
AMM: What appeals to you about the mediums you use most frequently in your work – acrylic and ink? Is it purely coincidence that they’re both water- Matthew F Fisher, The Psalmist, Acrylic on based? canvas, 20 x 16 inches
MF: Acrylic gives me the very freedom that oil paint constrains. As a young painter, I was never good with a quick grand gesture, a perfect brush stroke frozen in the sexiness of the oil paint that made it. Rather, I always noodled with the paint after I applied it, trying to concoct the perfect spontaneous moment. Acrylic allows me to noodle with the brush stroke without being lost in the lust of the oil paint surface. You have to earn that shine with acrylic. The creation of my work is very process-based: many, many layers of paint atop one another to create rich variety of color and optical texture. With the quick drying time of acrylic, it’s the perfect mend. My ink on paper drawings have the same approach of using layers to create a density of transparency. The richness and weight each work has is the result of the making, the act of painting that creates the image itself.
AMM: Your paintings are characterized by an overwhelming stillness. In them, the sea is rendered silent, a swooping gull static, a breaking wave frozen. This lends your work a slightly eerie tone, despite the saccharine colors. What ideas or concepts are you exploring in your work?
MF: There’s something inherent about the universal that allows for it to become personal. On the other side of the saw, the personal isn’t always universal. I search to find that sweet spot of maintaining my own deeply personal meaning while hoping others will find their own interpretations. During a recent studio visit, the guest spontaneously opened up to me about her ayahuasca experience after looking at one of my paintings. This ultra specific reading was never part of my original concept, but that reaction, a highly personal response to the imagery I created, tickles me to no end. I strive to make works that meet in the middle – between me and you.
AMM: What keeps you coming back to the subject matter that dominates your art?
MF: I still find humor in the landscape, the animals that occupy it, the cosmic ballet that surrounds it, and our deeply personal and flawed relationship as humans to our world. I jokingly refer to it as narrative art without a story. But there is a story, a story as big as the universe. A narrative so vast, so endless, where does one start to understand it? You stop and look, think, and relate what’s before you and to your current place in this world. The setting sun is something that has happened since the beginning of time; yet it still has the power to transfix us OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM through its magic, beauty, our awareness of self, and the fact we know it will happen again, again, and again. These are paintings of tomorrow viewed from today.
AMM: There’s a strong graphic element to your work. Has your style of painting changed over time? What has influenced and informed your work over the years?
MF: How has it changed over time? I have learned how to paint (laughs). I have only recently, in the last three years or so, started to better understand how my paintings function as images. Through years of making and looking at my paintings, I now have an awareness of how my actions create a structure and how the eye reads it. This reduces a lot of searching for resolve while I paint, opening up more time and energy to explore and push the imagery. I know how to paint; I am now more interested in what to paint.
The graphic element has intrigued me for some time, mostly as an excuse to not talk about the AbEx gesture. Rather, you have to talk about the image that was painted, a square, a chevron, a circle. I am drawn to the colorfield painters for this reason: Kenneth Noland, Thomas Downing, Jules Olitski, Paul Feeley, Carmen Herrera, John McLaughlin, artists who made abstraction without the overt gesture. The mark, their mark, was allowed to become bigger than it was by just being what it is, a shape, a color, a line. I have always needed to paint something, and thus have been unable to paint nothing unless I painted something.
The other great influence on my work has been getting to know so many wonderful painters who I respect as friends and contemporaries. I love painters who use paint, not like me, but in other ways, Elise Ferguson, Rob Matthews, Michele Hemsoth, Kyle Breitenbach, Nat Meade, Jim Lee, John Dilg, Ben Sanders, Gianna Commito to name a few. Although our relationship to surface and the property of paint varies greatly, these are artists who create an image through the belief that painting itself is all you need to make great work.
AMM: Before relocating to Los Angeles, you lived in New York City. Has the move had an influence on your art? In what ways are you influenced by your environment?
MF: My paintings are of course indebted to the natural world, but I am not as interested in painting from life as much as I am in taking from it. Even so, being here in LA, with the sun so strong and the weather so consistently perfect, I have started to feel this unique sense of ‘light’ emanate from the work I’ve made here. In NYC it’s possible to remove yourself from nature: all concrete all the time, trains, tunnels, buildings. Here in LA, one can’t be so arrogant. There are palm trees, cactuses, rosemary, growing everywhere. Nature always finds you, its growth and presence, a reminder that we are not alone even when we are.
AMM: For all your paintings of the ocean, are you a water person? When you’re not in studio, where would we likely find you?
MF: When I am not in the studio, I am most likely with my family watching our son grow up. A true reset to life. I have never savored every second of every day as I do now. Being a parent slows you down, asks you to constantly take stock of yourself, and forces you to do better. I spent a lot of time near the water as a child at my grandfather’s beach house on the ocean. I can remember going to bed each night to the sound of ocean waves crashing and waking up to the same sound the next morning. This was perhaps my earliest realization that I am just a blip on this earth, that the cosmos doesn’t need me like I need it. There was also a mystery of what lurked beneath, the animals, tides, lost ships, or what was over the horizon and out of sight, Europe, Africa. It’s all so grand and small at the same time, a magical relationship between the ocean and the danger and the safety of land. Those memories are still a major influence on me today. OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
AMM: What color would you say best represents you, and why?
MF: Blue. It has the range from green to purple, to go from the lightest shade to the deepest of darks. It can be all of those while always being blue. Even my pink paintings, the anti-blue mantra, respond directly to that desire of being blue.
AMM: How long do you typically work on a painting? What’s your process of painting?
MF: There’s no constant with regard to how long each work will take. Recently, a 20 x 16 inches averages around 6 weeks from start to completion. I am often working on one or two paintings at once. I find it hard to Matthew F Fisher, Father and be involved with more than that, especially if the palette Son, Acrylic on canvas, 25 x 20 is radically different between works. I paint in layers, inches. Collection of Fidelity many, many, layers. Often the background is completed Investments, Boston, MA. with several washes to achieve a seamless fade. Over that, the smaller brushes come out to create thousands of mini marks to contrast against that smooth gradation. Having used an airbrush in my work from 2008/09, I have no interest in using an airbrush now, of removing my hand via machine. I am drawn to the effects I can only make with brushes and paint and the density of process that is a result of the doing.
AMM: Where do you look for reference material? What sources feed your inspiration?
MF: After years of making work that was solely based off of source material, I yearned for a way of working that didn’t require me to have a book in my left hand for the reference of an animal, beer stein, church, or landscape I was painting. Most of what I paint comes completely from my mind. I have my way of making a wave, a sunset, I use the same motifs over and over creating new relationships within each painting. I can’t make the same painting twice, but I love seeing the differences between them. Recently, I have increased my vocabulary to include lobsters, crabs, flounders, and seagulls. Vintage dictionary illustrations are a nice way into this imagery, icons without iconography. Once I find myself painting the exact structure of an animal, more detail photographs are often required to help convey a sense of natural realism, even when it’s stylized. I make “post life” paintings that are deeply grounded in the living world around us.
AMM: What does your studio look and feel like?
MF: It’s a place where I can go and make a mess and leave it behind. My final paintings are clean, but there’s a sloppy process that is required to make them that way. The studio is where ideas can live and die. Regardless of outcome, I learn from every painting I attempt. How to make a mark, how to create a structure, what is too much and what is not enough. The studio is where I make art.
AMM: Any new shows coming up? What’s next for you?
MF: January 2019 will find my Los Angeles solo debut with Ochi Projects. After that, a show with Taymour Grahne in London, my first solo show in Europe. In between all of that, a group show with Robert Yoder at SEASON in Seattle this summer. I am super honored to be a guest at Pasaquan this fall in Columbus, Georgia, a residency through Columbus State University. And my son starts nursery school in September. OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
INTO THE BLUE Featuring: Matthew F Fisher Show runs Feb 2 – March 17, 2018 Art Murmur Reception: Friday March 2nd, 5-8pm
Johansson Projects presents Into the Blue, a solo show by Matthew F Fisher. Part moony Florida evenings, part castaway, part neo-pastel, part noir, part performative water works, part astro-physic – all of Fisher’s paintings approach the perfect through the imperfect. There’s a level of completeness, of polish, of finish to each painting, while still basking in the hand drawn. The quivering stillness of a strait line amplifies the unseen human energy.
These are images of a moment, maybe several, that have happened or will. They’re not magical or surreal or overtly spiritual. Rather they are once-in-a-life-time action frozen at just the right instant: everything aligns, everything you’ve ever done has lead up to right now, right here.
OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
MATTHEW F FISHER'S PORTRAITS OF BEACHSCAPES IN "INTO THE BLUE"
Feb 02, 2018 - Mar 17, 2018 | Johansson Projects, Oakland
Regularly exhibiting his work since 2004, Matthew F. Fisher just opened his first solo show in Northern California with Johansson Projects in Oakland, California. As stated by the gallery, "Into the Blue is part moony Florida evenings, part castaway, part neo-pastel, part noir, part performative water works, part astro-physic."
Fisher's work almost exclusively builds around cliché beach imagery—sunsets, crashing waves, starry nights, soaring birds, reflections and the overall calmness of the scenario. Although beautiful in real life, his visions of such settings are more polished, with elements appropriating almost geometrical shapes. This way the final image gets a surreal veneer, while evoking sentimental feelings through all the real-life familiar elements used. Both his ink drawings and acrylic paintings have the aesthetics of vintage futuristic air-brush art, notable through use of precise gradients, conspicuous line work, or bold space imagery. This glossy finish and careful construction is in direct juxtaposition with Fisher's evident hand drawn technique, which adds an indisputable charm to finished works. This contrast is emphasized in almost realistic details such as beach sand which are painted using 10-15 layers of tiny dots in different shades, applied using an old tooth brush. This particular element also confirms his dedication to producing hand-drawn work, using common materials and techniques.
Portraying moments that might have happened or will, the NY-based artist freezes these once- in-a-life-time moments into a harmonious, perfectly composed images, where just about everything aligns wonderfully. After this show, the Boston-born artist will be preparing works for couple of group shows in US and UK as well as two artists exhibition at SHRINE in NYC in April.
—Sasha Bogojev
OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
TAKING FROM LIFE: MY PHONE CALL WITH MATTHEW F FISHER
By PAUL MAZIAR | DEC. 2017
A certain philosophical depth persists in Matthew F Fisher’s cool, beach-centered paintings. His brightly- hued works are mellow, pleasant at a glance and could be construed as just being flatout dreamy. But their colors, the strangeness of their warped scale and juxtapositions of forms enchant perceptually. The often symbolic elements in Fisher’s images also evoke the ineffable, bearing a deeper vision. As a result, his work always provokes imagination.
Fisher is a recent Los Angeles transplant by way of New York City. I happened upon a showing of his acrylic paintings in 2015 at the Ampersand Gallery in Portland, Oregon. I was intrigued by his having lived in NYC, and that the scenes in his pictures seem to resemble landscapes elsewhere. They looked to me more like, maybe, Malibu — and I don’t know why, but in my mind, Montauk or even Rockaway seemed not likely at all. I’d become curious about his methods, theories, inspirations, and why there were never any people in his work. During a recent showing of his drawings at Ampersand, proprietor Myles Haselhorst mentioned Matthew’s plan to relocate to Los Angeles. I couldn’t miss the opportunity to pull on his coat; the following is our Matthew F Fisher, Songs of Finland (Blue), phone conversation, one late summer morning. 2017, Ink on paper, 9 x 5.5 inches
Paul Maziar: So you’re in Hawaii now?
Matthew F Fisher: We’re in Kauai, the oldest Hawaiian island, right on the beach.
PM: That sounds like a dream. Must be pretty surreal, that trip being in the middle of your move from New York City to Los Angeles.
MF: The whole thing is very Dharma Bums. We don’t move into our apartment for two weeks so we’re on a two-month road trip.
PM: All these beach-and-ocean scenes that show up in your paintings, were those kinds of scenes more or less imagined, fantasy scenes when you were back East?
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MF: My grandfather and I spent a lot of time on the Atlantic Ocean when I was a kid, and later in life, my parents moved to West Michigan, so I’ve always been near the water. I see these works as thinking back to the sense of awe that I had as a little kid, staring at these large bodies of water and not understanding that there’s a whole life underneath it. There’s a whole other world on the other side of the horizon line. So they’re tributes to that kind of primal curiosity. The works aren’t necessarily based on any one thing in particular. But lately, I’ve been interested in the quick moments that I see, especially on this trip — like, say, waves crashing on a rock. I’ll record that as a thumbnail sketch to bring back into the studio to develop it. I’ll distill something from an actual moment and then create an all new moment. I once saw two rocks and a big wave that crashed between them — it’s that kind of moment. That infinite, endless cycle of this world’s existence — you know, I was there to see it. I’ll make a little note so that later, I can return to refine it and create this new moment, this perfect moment. Though of course it started out as an already perfect moment. A different kind of perfect moment.
Left: Matthew F Fisher, The Narrows, 2015 Acrylic on canvas, 28 x 22 inches, Private collection, Brooklyn, NY
Right: Matthew F Fisher, Songs of Finland (Blue), 2017 (verso), Ink on paper, 9 x 5 1/2 inches
PM: It becomes something else entirely. But, thinking back to your having been in NYC, the environment is so much different than this kind of environment. Did you take trips to places like Montauk and others, or was it more or less your recollection of these scenes?
MF: It was more or less my remembering and putting it together within the frame of the canvas. I had a formal approach, even though it’s a very informal subject. But then there are a few that I’ve done of the empty beach — those reference Lake Michigan and being near the dunes of Western Michigan. So you have an elevated perspective of the water when you’re looking out at it. I see those being more about Lake Michigan as well, because that lake has the tendency to be extremely calm — no waves, as opposed to the ocean which is always roaring at its own pace. It’s funny, within the titles that I use, I don’t feel comfortable giving reference to America, because maybe I feel that I know America. So there’s a lot of European titles to give another layer of enigma.
PM: That word “enigma” makes me think of de Giorgio de Chirico...
MF: And de Chirico is a constructed reality, too. At least in the early works we think of. It’s, like, a reconstruction of a construction. OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
PM: Thinking about other twentieth century artists: Duchamp, Giacometti, who were moving away from being occupied by the idea that they had to create a one-to-one representation of what they saw — do you feel like you and some of your contemporaries have rid yourselves of that problem?
MF: I think there’s a resurgence of the landscape motif, and for me, I see that as the perfect bridge between abstraction and figuration: You can be abstract, and it has a relation to the body, to the human experience (because we all see landscapes) but you’re free to invent your reality within it. I’m thinking of Shara Hughes, Alan Praz. There’s this freedom to push reality all the way to abstraction, but it never really is abstraction. And it kind of answers the question of "abstraction or figuration?" It allows the thing to be both at the same time. And it’s this perfect, malleable motif that just goes back and forth between the two. The two artists I mentioned, as of now, seem to make figureless landscapes — so naturally, you the viewer are the one in the landscape. I don’t have any figures in my landscapes either, so we’re left to be the figures.
PM: I was just going to ask you about that: Why don’t human figures appear in your pictures?
MF: I think it just kind of came to me that way. I did a large early body of work where figures were heavily present as a narrative vehicle, a symbolic element. After that it was the still lifes, a lot of props which are tied to humans. In a way, a lot of this recent work is a kind of revolt against all the systems that I’d set up previously. The very specific narrative, historical settings (real places), figuration, etc. I wanted to be free of all that. I wanted to shift the burden of that back to the viewer. The way that I resolved these works was to add more stuff, more detail, more props — a little fire in the background, a snail crawling across... little details that exist in everyday life. I wanted to move on. So I gave myself the simple goal of doing everything different. By not having the figure in this work, there’s a coyness with sense of scale. You don’t know how big the rocks are or how small the waves are. You don’t know where you are — especially for the ones without land at the bottom. So I’m trying to mess with perception in a way. Once you put that figure in, it all gets grounded.
PM: The great thing about that, when the viewer is the figure, is that some of the rock formations have an intensity and relatability that makes the human not all that necessary.
MF: Exactly, and you don’t know how big these rocks are. And also, within the work, you look at it with a sense of how things in the real world act, and realize it’s totally fake. These rocks purposely look like sheet metal coming up out of the ground. I’m thinking of those great Ellsworth Kelly sculptures in rusten iron. They’re completely flat but they’re also painted in a way that gives them full form, a rotundness. So my work has this contradiction — both real and unreal; flat and dimensional; natural and artificial. And I kind of think of it (and this goes back to de Chirico) as “memory space.” We think we know what a wave looks like; we think we know what a sunset looks like in our mind, but when you actually go out and see it, you’re always so blown away at how real it actually is. I’m interested in these concepts — images in our mind, how we think we know how they really are. Our eye kind of tricks our mind to believe: "That’s how a wave crashes." But when our mind slows down the structures that are created, they’re totally illogical.
PM: It also makes me think of translation.
MF: Yes.
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PM: And the forms or symbols you’re creating can have different meanings, maybe analogous to the way that the meanings of words can change, subjectively.
MF: Exactly — context is always a thing. And back to that idea of my doing things differently from the previous body of work, I wanted to have perhaps the most open subject matter that I could possibly think of. The most universal: Everybody’s seen the sun set, the sun rise out of the water. Ocean, land, sand — these are things that, everywhere around the world, offer a similar experience, a similar relationship. They’re not specific, per se.
PM: Jasper Johns used supremely familiar images like the target, even the American flag. I’m wondering if Johns has been an important figure for you.
MF: You can’t say he’s not, but he’s not someone I’ve thought that much about. It’s interesting, because the target is such an iconographic work, and I’m more drawn to the targets of Kenneth Noland, which came five to ten years later. They both have this canvas-as-object thing. I think the reason I like Noland more than I do Johns, is that Noland has an openness to him; he shedded art history to create art history. [His works are] free from the weight that Johns hammered into his, even though Johns was still breaking all the rules.
PM: It’s open in the way that he’s not hiding something, as much as maybe Johns had been.
MF: Right, and ironically, it’s dependent upon the structure of the canvas, the shape of the inside — so there’s this back-and-forth between painting and painted.
PM: I’d like to ask you about the drawings, your works on paper. There’s an interview on your website, where you talk about your outdoor scenes as being specifically “not interior.” I was thinking of your works on paper as somehow being interior. That Robber's Cape, 2016, Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 25 inches. Private collection, may be because of some effect Amagansett, NY. of their framing, or their size.
MF: That’s interesting, because with the drawings — and I don’t know why this started — but I feel it necessary to draw a square within the piece of paper before I even begin the first mark; there’s kind of a framing element.
Working on some works on paper from here, I’m realizing the importance of drawing, for me, having less rigor, and that my relationship to the material is different. Like, if I screw something up, I just cut it out and glue a new piece of paper on it. Whereas in painting, I have less flexibility in the materials. With drawing, I’m free to do anything I want. The drawings (they’re black and white, sumi ink on paper) allow me to focus on the value of the piece, the black and white gradations, and I’m remembering how important that. I don’t think of that as much in painting because there’s color (which didn’t really answer your question). There are a few that were [exhibited] at Ampersand that I’m thinking of. They have a wave that goes along the bottom that kind of crashes on the edge — I always saw this water kind of sloshing inside of a basin. OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
PM: There’s a playfulness in those drawings, even though they’re kind of severe in their values. The playfulness is there in the aspect of hand-made. There are little cutout pieces...
MF: Those pieces are all hand-punched, hand-glued, and even the paper is sometimes found in the street. Sometimes, there’s a history already built into it. And the drawings can sometimes kick around for months and develop their own history in that sense, too. As I’m working on them, I’ll sometimes make little notations on the backs of them: miniscule things that just happened that would otherwise be forever forgotten. I was looking at the back of one a couple of weeks ago, and I’d just made a notation about how my dad said that he heard thunder. A few minutes later it rained. It was just a fleeting moment in reality that I’d never remember, but it struck me in that instant, so I wrote it down. They all kind of have a personal history to them. Some of the drawings I’ve been working on down here were started in Northern California and worked on in L.A. They travel where the paintings began. The painting studio is much more of a laboratory where things happen in a distilled environment. I’m not interested in “plein air,” or even painting from life. I’m more interested in taking from life.
PM: It’s so much less intellectual that way.
MF: (Laughing) I’m pretty unintellectual. I mean, I am… it’s funny, I’m 41 years old and, thinking about this art for the last 17 years, I’ve come to a realization throughout practice, through the making of the work, that although it’s not very deep at first, the more you think about it becomes much deeper.
PM: I meant that word in the negative sense that, maybe someone like de Chirico meant it in his later years when he’d rail against artists being too intellectual, too cerebral and bookish or whatever.
MF: Right. I think what de Chirico did, and what I also want to do (and, when younger artists say this, most teachers should say “that’s bullshit”) is to create a work that is so open that you know exactly what you did. And I think Guston did this, which adds to the power of those later pieces. Of course they’re about the Ku Klux Klan, but they’re also about him just smoking cigarettes. You create this work that’s so open that you almost reflect all responsibility back to the viewer, and I think that allows the viewer to go deep. (You could easily go too deep.) When it’s that open, when it’s that free for different readings — you know, just a man smoking a cigarette in a studio (and we all know the demons that Guston had) — it allows for so much more of an interesting, personal reading. And if somebody goes intellectual on the work, I don’t think it’s a bad thing; I’d take it as a compliment. Someone took all that time to really research it, think about it and make comparisons. Even though I’m not thinking about it that way, I accept that the work has the ability to go there. I want it to go there, but I also want it to be, like, just a beach scene. I’m kind of having my cake and eating it too. To be as open as possible, so that people can just go with it. Or not go with it...
PM: And that’s in the juxtaposition and the clarity of those images in relation to one another. And that Guston example is great, because it’s not like those klansmen in the paintings are on fire or whatever.
MF: And they’re not even any specific klansmen. In fact, they’re all klansmen, in fact they're all people in a way. And it’s unfortunately very relevant today: What would it be like to hate all day, and what would you do when you’re not hating? Drive a car, paint a paintings, smoke a cigarette. A friend of mine asked me recently, “what would it be like to live in 1968?” And in some ways I feel like we might be there today.
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PM: Pretty soon it’ll be coming up on fifty years. I was thinking about that looking at the Situationist manifestos and all that.
MF: Yeah, and it’s funny, you saying that word makes me think that we’ve got to bring the manifesto back. If only to make the point that "this is what we believe in."
PM: When I was looking at those like ten years ago, a lot of it seemed much more radical and extreme.
MF: And I think that they need a radical and extreme time to make sense.
PM: To take us back to California, I’m curious about how being there will affect your work. Do you have a studio?
MF: Having lived in New York since grad school, there’s a deep sense of New York (even though the imagery might not necessarily reflect it), and I feel that that comes across in the fact that they’re very dense paintings — they’re heavy, there’s a weight to how they’re made that’s very East-Coast. If you look at your East Coast Minimalists, you’ve got Richard Sera, Carl Andre — people using heavy construction materials like steel and wood beams. Then the West Coast Minimalists — Robert Irvine and James Turrell, people who experimented much more with light. I’m curious to see how that comes into the work. Will it stay the same, or does that [light] start to creep in, and at what point and how?
I think being in L.A., the sunshine and the light are going to come through. And strictly on a nerd level, there’s an acrylic paint company out in Los Angeles called Nova Paints. My friend Ben Sanders turned me onto them and I bought a few tubes last year and as I was using it, I realized that the color pallette of Los Angeles acrylic painters goes through Nova Paints. I’m thinking of Brian Calvin and Ben Sanders himself. And on the East Coast, Golden Paints has the monopoly, so I’m curious to see how using Nova Paints might change the end product and image.
I’m so happy to be here at this time. I’ve never been more confident in how I make paintings, never been more confident in what I paint. And now, to be put into a new environment, a new landscape, a new everything... I don’t think those things will change, they’ll definitely influence and affect what I do. That’s what art’s about: responding.
PM: I’m staring at The East on your website, thinking of your comment about the “weight” of the East Coast. Even though these hues are light and airy, that huge mass of whatever that is (a little bubble that has been magnified?)... I mean, that’s just so heavy.
MF: I was fortunate enough to see my paintings in a bright-white art fair last year, in this all- white booth, and these are just like dark-matter nuggets stuck to the wall. There’s just a heaviness to them. When they’re all just standing next to each other in the studio, you don’t sense it but, when they get some space between them, you really feel like all the light gets sucked in. When I think of those East Coast and West Coast Minimalists, I’m curious to see how the work will be affected.
PM: Me too. Thanks so much for taking the time, Matt. WM
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MONYA ROWE GALLERY 4 Rohde Avenue Saint Augustine, FL 32084
JULIE CURTISS & MATTHEW F FISHER The Perfect Order of Randomness May 13 – June 25, 2017
Monya Rowe Gallery is excited to present a two-person exhibition of paintings by Julie Curtiss and Matthew F Fisher titled The Perfect Order of Randomness.
Curtiss and Fisher both employ a hard-edge flat aesthetic to illuminate pop and graphic elements. Simplified forms and lines are used to accentuate the passing of time where dream- like imagery transforms the ordinary into the uncanny.
Curtiss’s paintings employ a cinematic composition in their intimacy. A close up of the back of a woman’s head feels like a scene from an auteurist film. Everyday suburban settings are infused with a touch of the surreal: a bowl of fruit on fire or a hand stretching out from a bush to light a woman’s cigarette. Like Christina Ramberg (1946–1995) before her, contradictions in every-day life are a large theme in Curtiss’s work. A traditional tea setting between a mother and daughter is juxtaposed by contradicting elements such as a black tea cup, and masculine hands with long red nails. A woman with a conventional hairstyle in a bun mysteriously holds her green painted pointy fingernails close to her face. An unsettling duality, signaling strong feminist undertones, coexists in the protagonists that inhabit Curtiss’s paintings. These women may live in a domesticated environment, but it does not solely define them. They are mysterious and complicated beings.
Curtiss’s intimate subjects are a contrast to the cool colors and shapes in Fisher’s work. Fisher continues to employ a motif of waves, birds, sunsets and moons. His stylish landscapes of the natural world represent, in the words of the artist, “a personal, but faceless humanity”. Simple shapes are frequently used in representational settings calling to mind a fuzzy dream. Characterized by a style that draws on the simplicity of folk art, Fisher’s inspiration comes from Joseph Yoakum (1889 – 1972) and Chicago Imagist Roger Brown (1947 – 1997), among others. In these paintings, the real is not imagined, rather the imaginary becomes real. A sincere dry humor emanates from the work. Insert Title is a painting of an unabashedly psychedelic pink sunset. Fisher and Curtiss both share an affinity for the unexplained, even the everyday supernatural, and a desire to distill a complex world.
Julie Curtiss (b. 1982, Les Lilas, France) received a MFA from Ecole Nationale Superieur des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France (2006). Her work was recently exhibited in a solo presentation at SPRING/BREAK Art Show, NY, curated by Hein Koh, and included in a group show at The Hole, NY. Upcoming group exhibitions include White Cube, London, U.K. Curtiss lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Matthew F Fisher (b.1976, Boston, MA) received a MFA from the Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA (2000) and a BA from Columbus College of Art and Design, Ohio (1998). His work was recently the subject of a solo exhibition at Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York. Fisher lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
Matthew F Fisher Observable Universe 18 January – 22 February 2017 Opening: 18 January, 6 – 8 PM
Every attempt to produce that which shall be any rock, ends in the production of that which is no rock. John Ruskin, Modern Painters, 1843
Taymour Grahne Gallery is pleased to present Observable Universe, a solo exhibition of new works by Brooklyn-based artist Matthew F Fisher. Exploring notions of timelessness and nature, Fisher’s paintings are a meditation on the relationship between permanence and intransience. At times, the sky is bathed in a warm, rosy pink, at others, a cool blue, evocative of balmy nights in springtime. We are gazing out to sea, a moment of infinite stillness, where even the ripples of the waves seem to have slowed down. We are suspended in a moment, a sense of a floating before and after time. There are no people. There is no date. No marker of when this could be. There is just the sky and the sea and the long line of the horizon. There is the simple, immovable bulk of rock and the great orbs of the sun and moon. This is a timeless place. It is pristine yet primordial. It is modern yet ancient. It is all places at once.
Time is central to Fisher’s practice, a meditation on temporality. By repeatedly using certain visual elements, such as the seagull or waves, Fisher strips them of any prior associations and derives new meaning. The color palette he uses (reminiscent of the lush, peppy hues of the late 1980s and early 90s) is at odds with his stark two-dimensional painterly style. This merging and melding of elements creates a new visual language, and frees the works from any specific genre or date.
The new works represent a soft revolution, as Fisher’s intransient tableaux have taken a subtle nudge towards permanence. The waves, though frozen, will ultimately return to the sea, in the relentless ebb and flow of the tide. Rocks feel solid, present. Clouds fill the horizon, large and flat, gazing upon their own reflection in the sparkling sea below them. Stars sparkle in the water, reflections of the great, unshifting, timeless universe above. Perhaps the sun is not setting, but rather, rising. We are standing at the dawn of a new day.
Matthew F Fisher (b. 1976, Boston) received his BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design (1998), followed by his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University (2000). He has been the recipient of residencies and awards from the Pollock Krasner Foundation (2016), Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York (2015, 2007) and the New York Foundation for the Arts (2010), among others. Recent solo exhibitions include Sun, Stars, Sea and Moon, Airlock Gallery, San Marco, CA (2016) and Black Water Don’t Shine Like the Moon, Sardine, Brooklyn, NY (2015). Group shows include the two artist exhibition The World Outside, with Ryan Schneider, at Gordon Galleries, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA (2015) and Pro Forma: Context and Meaning in Abstraction, curated by Dr Vittorio Colaizzi, Work Release, Norfolk, VA (2017). Fisher’s work is in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
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If You Ain’t a Reflection, You’re a Wave: Interview With Matthew Fisher
Ridley Howard, Contributor 03/14/2014 01:03 pm ET Updated Dec 06, 2017
Matthew Fisher was Born in Boston, grew up in Three Rivers, Michigan, and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He received a BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design, and an MFA from VCU. He was a recipient of the NYFA Fellowship, and a resident at Yaddo, the Millay Colony, and the Vermont Studio Center. He recently had a solo show at Mulherin+Pollard Projects, NY, and his current show at Ampersand Gallery, Portland, Oregon will run through March 23rd. Please visit Ampersand Gallery for more info on his current show.
Ridley Howard: You seem to always play with the idea of genre. You’ve dealt with history painting, portraiture, still life, and landscape — but your involvement is fresh, and very much your own.
Matthew F Fisher: Painting things has always been a part of my thought process. It seemed like every young painter in school wants to have the brash of Robert Motherwell or the skills to paint like a photograph. I quickly learned I was neither. I found myself fussing over a brushstroke I had just made, trying to improve it. To start a painting, there had to be something, a representation, for me. I love abstraction — I just can’t paint like that. I love the idea of an image being nothing and everything at the same time, but I just don’t think that way. While these new works come closer to abstraction than I have previously ventured, they remain grounded in our world. Our knowledge of what nature is, helps us complete the images.
RH: Landscape was always a major character in your work, even as a setting, and now it is the focal point. How did that shift come about?
MF: After my first solo show at RARE in 2009, I wanted to try to make paintings without using figures. For the next two years I made symbolic still life paintings that hinted at a presence without actually showing a figure. After my second show, I hit a wall. I saw my process of painting as piling objects and animals together, creating a forced narrative out of associations of proximity, and that was it. After months of trying to paint something, I walked into the studio and told myself to make a drawing of nothing. Nothing is never just nothing; but, I saw the horizon line, where water meets sky, as being both empty and full. The openness of looking out over an endless sea was the nothing I was looking for. OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
RH: The waves in the newest paintings feel alive, yet they are composed primarily of geometric shapes. There is a tension in their simplicity. You can feel this very strict containment of the water, which gives them a power. At the same time, they are painted in softer, pretty colors that make them playful and Pop.
MF: The new work exists in an interesting limbo between natural and artificial, of showing action and stillness, depicting an image that is universal, but also personal. Being both, while simultaneously being neither, gives the generic images I use (a wave, cloud or sunset), a new edge. The colors come out my use of acrylic paint. Their saturated colors help complicate one’s expectation of what is natural and real. The same goes for the use of geometric shapes. How else are you going to paint these images?
RH: They also play with the formal language of painting. There is a wonderful sense of design. Do you focus primarily on those aspects of an image or is there a narrative involved as well?
MF: The beauty of painting is that there is this formal language, a deep history of what has been done. The materials haven’t changed, it’s always been pigment rubbed onto cloth that is stretched over wooden sticks. By continuing to work within the material limitations, I am more able to play with the elements of design, color and image. I first got into art through photography, and the act of looking through a SLR camera lens trained my eye and brain to think inside rectangular shapes. Jack Beal taught me to respect the edges of compositions by allowing objects or actions to go right up to the edges, but never over them. Often objects only leave the bottom edge of my paintings. Lately, I have found my best ideas come to me when I have no ideas. I force myself to play with and push out what ever comes to my mind in that moment of clarity. This creates the most interesting images for me. Another strategy is to do the opposite of whatever I was doing before. By challenging my color or composition choices, I better understand how they work by seeing them in a new way.
RH: Your work balances highly rendered areas, highly un-rendered areas, and painterly effects. Do you see this as giving the paintings a type of tension? MF: My painting process has always started from the furthest point back. By painting the sky first, I can use the larger brushes and many layers of transparency to create atmosphere and gradations that cannot be made with my smaller brushes. Still, before I begin working on the foreground, the background has to contain something that excites me. This can result in up to ten layers or more of paint to create a color fade before I begin to add the rest of the painting. Despite the clean edges in the final painting, my painting process is very messy.
RH: Funny to see the sparkle foam as painterly magic.
MF: The sparkle and spray is, in fact, a mini splatter. The force and energy of the crashing wave is perfectly frozen by this painterly action. The spray looks real, because it is real. Still, it doubles as a stand in for what real spray looks like. Again, I am playing with this notion of being both real and fake, of stillness and motion. For me, the beauty of painting is that it can be so simple that it becomes deep.
RH: There are nods to numerous painters (Lissitzky, Arp, Léger, and countless Americans). Are these references at the forefront of your thoughts or a more integrated part of your process?
MF: Art History is always on my mind. About three or fours years ago, I stopped looking at as much art as I had been previously. This choice was not out of ignorance, but rather an attempt to keep my mind clear. After years of working in galleries, framers, and art moving companies in OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
New York, I have constantly been exposed to all kinds and periods of art. I am not completely interested in referencing other painters’ work, of making art about art. That type of inside joke bores me. I want to be able to take and use whatever I wish, in order to make the painting work. This kind of arrogance requires a knowledge and understanding of art. After two decades of looking and studying art, I feel comfortable to pull away, or at least walk on the other side of the street, when I make my art. The images I make aren’t completely new; no artist today could hold themselves up to that standard. Rather, my paintings play with my own visual assumptions of reality, history, and knowledge. What you know isn’t always what you see. And what you see isn’t always what you know.
RH: Your work has always merged a kind of realism, with Pop cartoonishness. I know you like a lot of the Chicago imagists. Did they influence your thinking early on?
MF: Roger Brown was my idol in art school, and still is. His language of representation and abstraction, of playing with space and scale is so good. He also opened my eyes to other ways of making and showing space within a painting. Why must American art obey western perspective or photographic space? If Giorgio de Chirico tore up the perspective handbook, Roger Brown put it back together, but in a different order. The Chicago Imagists also looked toward the untrained artists to help them understand what it means to make an image. Attending art school in Columbus, Ohio, I was exposed at an early age to two of America’s greatest 20th century folk artists: William Hawkins and Elijah Pierce. Their freshness and strangeness was the answer to so many art school questions posed to me. Like Roger Brown and Ray Yoshida, Hawkins and Pierce taught me the importance of imagery, narrative, and gave me permission to play with depicted space.
RH: I think you introduced me to Rockwell Kent in about 2002. These new paintings seem to have a lot of Kent in them. Is he still on your radar?
MF: Rockwell Kent is one of American’s great painters. Kent’s paintings contain an energy and sensibility that only come through observation. Although he’s not the influence on me that he was before, his truthfulness in details give his work the reality that my work plays against. As specific as his work is, in terms of actual location, mine is universal. The Vulcan proverb “Only Nixon could go to China” is never far from my mind. I can only make these paintings because I live right now.
RH: Thinking back, though your work can have a kind of sadness or even dark psychology, the paintings always feel celebratory in a way. There is a joy in the ‘event’ of your paintings, even in their restraint. Do you see the work as emotional or joyous?
MF: That’s an interesting question. When asked if the works are depictions of sunrises or sunsets, I have to answer that I have seen more sunsets than sunrises in my life. There is a practical side to these images, a bewilderment of nature. Waves have been crashing and clouds floating for as long as time itself. Nature always does its thing; we’re just in the way. The fun thought is that there is a world of life hidden just below the surface. These exact truths don’t fuel my work, but I just love the idea that a single line, horizontal to the bottom of canvas, automatically sets up a here and there, us and them, land and sea, lost and found. It’s as old as time. OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM
Matthew F Fisher, "Black Water Don’t Shine Like the Moon"
February 12-18, 2015
Even at first glance, Matthew F Fisher’s show of ink drawings is long on charm and quirk. Hung in a single row in this modest space aptly named Sardine, the 30 works on paper feature meticulously limned scenes of nature.
Fisher’s renderings limit the natural world to only a few motifs, stylized to the point of eccentricity. Bent grasses assume calligraphic forms. Crashing waves, striated like tresses of hair and made effervescent by tiny collaged bubbles, break in several directions at once, often framing a celestial orb. As in the Surrealist André Breton’s notion of “convulsive beauty,” the world in Fisher’s images shapes itself into a kind of writing.
Fisher’s often humorously literal line recalls cartoons, and his ornamental treatment of natural phenomena brings to mind certain strains of folk art. But these drawings also evoke the abstracting love for nature’s vitality shared by early American modernists like Arthur Dove and Georgia O’Keeffe, as well as an oddball mysticism. Quietly cultivating an idiosyncratic vision, Fisher’s work becomes nothing short of visionary.
—Joseph R. Wolin
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Properties of Water in The River Keeps Talking
Freaky Beaches and Neon Sunsets at Ampersand Gallery
AUG 19, 2015 | by Megan Burbank
WITH ITS MASSIVE photography library covering everything from artists' books to heavyweights like Richard Avedon and Sally Mann, I never want to leave Ampersand Gallery. Never. I want to curl up on the concrete floor with a stack of books full of images by Imogen Cunningham or Ed Ruscha, or an obscure work I've never heard of (see: Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin's excellent bastardization of the Bible; Ampersand's got it), like a more intrusive used-bookstore cat.
It seems almost unfair to other galleries that Ampersand gets to offer this collection alongside their shows, because it means that even if the art on the walls isn't quite what you're looking for, something will be. It also means that when a show arrives that can suck me out of my library- induced stupor, it's worth yelling about. Ampersand's latest show, The River Keeps Talking: Ellen McFadden, Matthew F Fisher, Clayton Cotterell, is one of these. It plays upon that Pacific Northwest sensibility that we live up here on the edge of the world, with each artist considering—to some degree—our communion with water.
Of all of the works, Clayton Cotterell's photographs of watery landscapes (a churning eddy in a river, the seam between ocean and sky) appear to be the most purely representational. But this is quite literally a trick. Cotterell's images are highly manipulated, but while the effect is occasionally obvious, it's near impossible to discern what he's done to achieve it. Occasionally, the enhancement looks digital, and sometimes it's plainly old-school—a flash used to blow out OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM the color on a leaf. One of Cotterell's river views is so solarized-looking it resembles nothing so much as grouped arteries and blood cells glimpsed through the lens of a microscope. Another photo is more legible—it's a heavily textured body of water fading into sky. The color—a cerulean tinted with an unnatural-looking green—seems a little off, but otherwise, this is nature photography. The pairing presents a playful challenge: By juxtaposing obviously manipulated images with what seems like straight-ahead photography, Cotterell calls into question the authenticity of his entire body of work on display.
If Cotterell's abstraction is subtle, Ellen McFadden's is the opposite. The 87-year-old (!) painter, who recently exhibited at Wieden+Kennedy, works in huge, geometric gestures. Her circles 'n' squares are evocative of Sonia Delaunay's geometric abstraction, but McFadden's color palette is pure pop. She works in super-bold yellows, mint green, magentas, and reds—an onslaught of color that's the visual equivalent of mainlining Fun Dip. But it works, thanks to McFadden's clever containment of her bright lights in highly-concentrated cubes, their legions suggestive of paint-chip gradients.
Matthew F Fisher's paintings are a happy medium between McFadden's broad strokes and Cotterell's intricate tricks of the eye. Working in a set of freaky seaside motel-esque near-neons, Fisher's fractured landscapes feature confusing perspectives set by super-low horizons; further destabilizing is his penchant for putting abstract shapes into almost-representational settings. What the fuck, Matthew F Fisher? Installing wacky shapes on what looks like a beach during sunset guarantees you'll want to identify the object. I mean, you definitely can't. But you'll try anyway.
It gets weirder: Here's a humanoid wave you didn't ask for. Here's a trippy pink sunset called "The Rose of Nowhere." Speaking of titling, Fisher's opaque names for his images make no effort to give you anything else to hold onto. If you're looking for meaning, you won't find it in "Meaningless September." So, as with everything else in The River Keeps Talking, don't look for meaning. Just look.
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A Complete Eye of Water: A Summer Show at Ampersand Gallery
Saturday, September 19th, 2015 | by Paul Maziar
Report from Portland The River Keeps Talking at Ampersand Gallery & Fine Books July 30 to August 25, 2015 2916 NE Alberta Street, Suite B Portland, OR, 503 805 5458
“The River Keeps Talking,” Ampersand Gallery’s recent summer exhibition, was an engaging one in what seems to be a string of impressively curated shows to grace Portland’s Alberta Arts District. This was a show of ecological and geometric forms carrying with them iconographic meanings both straightforward and conceptual, featuring work by Matthew F. Fisher, Clayton Cotterell and Ellen McFadden.
Walking up at just the right hour, 5:30 pm on my most recent trip, I was pleased to be greeted by the shadow of palm fronds projected by the sunset via the gallery front window. Palm trees are uncommon in Portland, and for this particular show’s sequence of paintings and prints, the tree’s image is the perfect invenzioni when combined with what it provisionally flanks: the last in the sequence of Fisher’s surreal beachside acrylics.
These paintings are thick with saturated, bubblegum pop hues, nostalgia and style, recalling early summer heat and its light hazes. These and another thing: water, which is in itself becoming a rarity. (Is this an implicit reason for its center-stage position in this show?) Where there is water, it can be said, there are people there too. But not one bather is seen here. This, along with an occasion to test perception of image production, is part of the exhibition’s charm. Looking at the paintings and what they might tell or ask of us, let’s also say that the appearance of the aforementioned palm-shadow has not only the one meaning, that the sun is low in the sky and what’s in its way’s been pinned up on the wall as a dark gray projection, but a second meaning, like that of the removal of one’s hat at a passerby to signal a hello. This show, at first glance, is just as good humored, and we can accept this meaning as a friendly handshake, paying attention to what is both obvious and also what is unknown. This was a good setup, at least for me, for the imagistic and (however loose) narratives found in Fisher’s paintings. Taking the show on in reverse, the first acrylic is the show’s final one: Meaningless September (2014). The painting is a suitable point of entry for both Fisher’s own works and those of Cotterell and McFadden.
If Fisher’s subjects are maritime (though not specific to any era), they remain in limbo between loose and tight, specific and abstract, atmospheric and microscopic. In Meaningless, Fisher’s OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM layer-by-layer process of painting is revealed through the curious buildup, or rollup, of the water’s edge up to a very granulated beach. This feature of water is highly strange, in that we can deduce its being water, though it also looks like something else. Plastic or rubber, in any case something you could peel away, roll back up and tuck under your arm. This version of the sea looks like daytime starlight as it ripples back toward the horizon line so famous in all of Fisher’s paintings. Fisher’s approach is presumably no-ideas, which leads him to certain subjects that might be precluded by more deliberation.
Another of Fisher’s apprehending canvases, Silly Boy, 2014, shows a single blade of seagrass as the tallest plant around. The simple leaf in this last painting, by this logic, takes on the importance of any subject ever painted. Here, by virtue of the shoot’s being presented in apparent reverence, the artist allows us to overstep the limits of merely formal perception and imagine the ordinary as extraordinary or even otherworldly. Likewise, the two large “drops” of water in Meaningless, hung magically aloft, loom large, and appear as mystical presences. In this way, Fisher’s simple subjects appear to us without much relation to his forebears or reference to painting itself and the impedimenta of career. In its stark everything-and-nothing, the painting recollects The Glass Bubbles (1850), by English poet Samuel Greenberg, who wrote:
The motion of gathering loops of water Must either burst or remain in a moment. The violet colors through the glass Throw up little swellings that appear And spatter as soon as another strikes And is born; so pure are they of colored Hues, that we feel the absent strength Of its power. When they begin they gather Like sand on the beach: each bubble Contains a complete eye of water
Water is by now the overarching motif in this exhibition, and it shows up in various guises. The former imagistic synchronicity found in the Greenberg poem perhaps allows for some of the subtler and uncanny aspects of the element represented in all three of these artists’ works Fisher’s new imagery is cool, fun, and highly attractive to anyone keen on ocean views and graphics, and furthermore it is decisively mellow. These paintings give a more mystical sense, and, when juxtaposed with the comparatively more intense prints by Cotterell on the gallery’s facing wall, they look pretty dreamy.
Cotterell’s four collaged photographic pigment prints, in their flat-out dazzling compositional simplicity, make their subjects — water and landscape — full of surprise. In this first pigment print, Untitled (2015) Cotterell has made what looks like a wave in black, white, and silver, look like a tide is turning into a frozen tundra bedecked with stars. What appears to be the surf at another glance could then also be a snowy mountain range with charred stumps of trees at its further melted base. The prints depict movement while being compositionally static (being the prints they are), because of their effect upon the eye, which makes one guess again and again at what’s being shown. These works are reminders that what is commonly known can always become unfamiliar through experimentation, and thus contain the possibility to baffle, in a good way.
In another untitled print by Cotterell, the largest in the show, we get a mid-ocean view with the horizon abandoning itself for the sky. Looking at this I get the feeling of standing on the edge of a high cliff, or on a boat out to sea, that the world has taken on a characteristic of limitlessness. It’s what people since the Ancient Greeks (as far back as we have record) felt when they looked OCHI 3301 W WASHINGTON BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90018 WWW.OCHIPROJECTS.COM out over a cliffside, overwhelmed at all there was to take in, with simultaneous doubt with regard to possibility or passibility. We either can’t believe what we are seeing, or it’s too much to take in
Standing as close as allowable to the print, starting at its left hand corner, one has the desire to take in the composition little by little to know its very details. Is it wind that causes the more intense wavelets in this area of the water, or has it something more to do with the chosen medium or some other texture collaged in? Moving the eye upward toward the sky, the water’s calm is described by both its smoothness and this portion of the print’s lightening shade. Cotterell’s third untitled print is a splash, in the same black/white/silver of the previous two. This is all the intensity and energy of the second print, condensed to 18 x 22 inches. The flow is green, white, and incensed. In person, this print looks like the splash or whirlpool it is, except with the strange detail that the edges appear to be glass or plastic. What is water? It is temporarily rechanneled through what amounts to experiments with forms and mediums, into the perceptions of this show’s viewers.
In the back room of the gallery are three large acrylic paintings by McFadden. They’re brightly hued and geometric, belying a pure abstraction that they only partially contain. This exhibit is McFadden’s third exhibition in the span of a year. These works reflect McFadden’s memories and perspectives on Northwest waterways, which are in her words “nearly dead today.” Do I know this because I read the leaflet? Only partially, as this “information” is also translated into her paintings.
In these vibrant configurations of line and color, McFadden shows the icon of nuclear effect upon water, in a creative direction she describes on her website as “constructive.” For McFadden, “the paintings serving a purpose of two dimensional surface as the basis for tension and interaction with shape and the four outside edges. Color is a part of that interaction,” but because these aren’t pedantic ecological narratives, the viewer is also a part of the interaction, adding to an already congenial aesthetic experience.
In Solkuks Wanapum and Wanapum (both 2015), river water cools as the rectangular shapes (representing water) change from jasper red to salvia blue and violet, the further away they get from toxicity. In the former composition, skinny, black rectangles represent the nuclear plants the water flows among, “not unlike the confluence of the Snake and Columbia Rivers, downstream from where the Wanapum Indians once lived and fished before being displaced by dams in the 1950s,” McFadden says. Work and life are apparent in these canvases, but you have to take a good look. As the hues and geometries change and converge from painting to painting, a concern for the occupied, precarious, and sublime states of water are displayed and enter our experience. Ellen McFadden’s ecological concerns and keenness to the problematic of production began early on, when she worked at a cannery as a young child. This combination of idea and practice makes McFadden’s paintings part of a dialogue.
If the emblem of Modern Art was to abandon formalist conventions, then the art of our era (whatever you want to call it) takes reference in lieu of illusionist figuration, fragments in place of “clear” statements, questions over answers, and dialogue instead of solitude: all of which can be found in the pictures seen in the above exhibition. One of the pleasures of recognizable subjects like these in The River Keeps Talking, is their ability to be riven, abstracted, rearranged, and collaged all while remaining perceptible. To me, this is what accounts for the hospitableness of shows like this; there’s point of entry but we’re not told exactly what to see or how to see it.
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MATTHEW FISHER
If You Ain't a Reflection, You're a Wave
February 27 to March 23, 2014
Ampersand is pleased to present If You Ain't a Reflection, You're a Wave, a solo exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Brooklyn-based artist Matthew Fisher. As the show title indicates, the work sets up two simple extremes, waves and reflections, a singular focus with origins in 2011 when Fisher first started painting grass shapes set against an ocean horizon line. "Existing in a state between frozen and movement," writes the artist, "natural and artificial, cliché and personal, these paintings strive for a universal, while at the same time personal narrative." Three narrow, mid-scaled paintings show elongated cloud forms hovering above bodies of water. We see no trace of land or life. "The clouds, stagnant in their grace, marked only by their reflections in passing water, remind us that nature is always more beautiful than the man made, even when," adds Fisher, "that nature is constructed out of our expectations of what is natural." This dichotomy between perceived natural environments and those that exist in our mind continues in his ongoing exploration of the wave motif. These smaller works ask the viewer to be lost at sea. With a horizon line covered by towering waves, our sense of balance is twisted by the implication of turbulent water, as though Fisher is asking why are we here? Where are we going? Why? "Transported to the middle of the sea, we are reminded that the world moves on with or without us." Despite the implication of sea spray and forceful lines, the movement of each wave is frozen, much like our personal memories of the ocean and the symbolic sway it holds over our collective imagination. "These memories," Fisher notes, "witnessed from life, played out over and over, are transformed into smoothed over clichés of what were once deeply personal experiences. Yet they remain mental postcards of where we've been. Where we all have been. And where we all can go if we think back to that moment."
Matthew Fisher lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been shown widely in several group and solo exhibitions. Recent solo exhibitions include Lsot Time (2010) at Heskin Contemporary, New York and Asea, Aloof (2012) at Mulherin + Pollard Projects, New York. His work is held in several private and public collections. This is his first exhibition with the gallery.
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Issue #62 | 2006
Brooklyn artists Caris Reid’s Water Warriors and Matthew F Fisher’s waves were at home in this natural light that felt so unnatural. Their mutual undulations—between flatness and dimensions, between stillness and motion, between realism and illustration—played back and forth among the evening’s encroaching shadows. Fisher’s tongue-in-cheek, paintbrush-swipe waves lightened the rigid expressions of the Water Warriors. And, Reid’s mandala-like forms amplified the similarly meditative details that grounded Fisher’s backdrops.
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Mulherin + Pollard is pleased to present Asea, Aloof, an exhibition of recent paintings and drawings by Matthew Fisher. Fisher is a Brooklyn, NY-based artist who makes stylized paintings that utilize symbolic placement, pattern, line, and a sense of the lasting touch of man on landscapes that reference universal timing, placement, and a frozen sense of now.
Fisher's latest works depict the sea as a contemplative space detached from human presence and often from any sense of land itself as well. Here, narrative is replaced by a concern with the quieter drama of the sea itself-the motion of its ripples, the fleeting nature of its form and appearance, and its interactions and relationship with light, space, the drifting clouds, and the passing of time.
Fisher was educated at the Columbus College of Art and Design and received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2000. He has had numerous solo exhibitions including at Heskin Contemporary, New York (2010); RARE Gallery, New York (2009); ADA Gallery, Richmond, VA (2009 and 2006); and the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA (2006); and has shown extensively in group exhibitions in the United States and abroad. He was awarded a Fellowship in Painting from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2010.
SHOW OPENS THURSDAY APRIL 26, 6-8PM MULHERIN + POLLARD 187 CHRYSTIE STREET NY, NY 10002