Louise Fishman: It’s Here, Elsewhere at Goya Contemporary
March 5 – April 5, 2013
Reception: Friday, March 15, 6-8pm
Goya Contemporary Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent work by New York painter, Louise Fishman. Celebrated for her monumental gestural abstractions, Fishman’s commitment to the physicality of painting- in a time when the act painting as a whole dwells in question — stands as a bold confirmation of her lifelong pledge to the medium.
While Fishman’s practice avoids open narration of the events of her life, her paintings are certainly rooted in the cultural, political and emotional experiences by which she is surrounded. Born in Philadelphia in 1939, Fishman was active in the feminist movement of the late nineteen-sixties and early nineteen-seventies. During this time, Fishman experimented with sculptural forms that correlated to the material investigation favored by her peers, who were seeking a specific vernacular for “feminine” art.
Gallery direct Amy Raehse explains: “Fishman’s work is achieved through a vigorous dance of mark-making which reveals surfaces galvanized by paintbrushes, scrapers, trowels, paint and physical assertiveness; baring witness to the reality of the artist’s true-life motion. The paintings are labored over, worked and reworked, forming an overlapping account of space and texture, of hue and value, of physical limitation and the awareness of the body, of mortality and immortality, of real history and fictive history… quite often filtered loosely through the memory of the grid [another facet of the artist’s history as a painter], all forming a spiritually charged experience ripe with indescribable, liminal, yet humanized tension.”
Many of the paintings in this exhibition were inspired by the artist’s recent trip to the Emily Harvey Foundation in Venice, Italy. Walking through the streets once graced by the feet of Titian, for example, had a profound and stimulating effect, as did the intensity of the blue water, or the piety perceived in every crevice of the Italian landscape.
Fishman documented her daily walks through the Italian landscape by use of the camera, so that, upon returning to New York, she could interpret and process her experiences. Back in the studio, picture postcards of Venetian paintings were tacked to the walls, and with acceptance of their influence, these images were sifted through the artist’s unique and personal history, and of course memory- which tends to escape sequence, much like the artist’s work. It is here, though the many facets of separation and experience, that the work reveals an unmistakably familiar connection to both the subconscious and also the collective conscious.
Of course, this is not the first time travel has acted as a springboard for Fishman’s scripts. The artist drew profound inspiration from a 1988 trip to Eastern Europe. Visiting the Holocaust concentration camps of Auschwitz and Terezin further connected Fishman to her Jewish identity. The resulting group of works titled “Remembrance and Renewal” contained small amounts of silt from the Pond of Ashes at Auschwitz, mixed with beeswax and paint, creating a somber yet sacred effect.
Though Fishman draws strength and stimulus from her surrounding world, we should not disregard the fact that her real power is in her application of paint, and the way she transforms material into matter. As Edward Gomez aptly explained in his 2000 article in the New York Times, “[Fishman] holds no formulas for making an image say or mean anything in particular. A work’s emotive force, she says, still emerges mysteriously.”
This exhibition was graciously made possible by Cheim & Read Gallery in New York, and by the artist.
Goya Contemporary & Goya-Girl Press
3000 Chestnut Avenue, Mill 214, Baltimore, MD 21211
P: 410-366-2001 F: 410-235-8730
www.goyacontemporary.com
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Stopgap: Lisa Dillin at Gallery 4
March 16 – April 20, 2013
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 16th, 7-10pm
Gallery Four presents Stopgap, a solo exhibition of recent works by Baltimore artist Lisa Dillin. Through installation, sculpture, and participatory works, Stopgap explores the struggle between our animal instincts and the confines of living in a manufactured world where primitive desires are satiated; the natural world is brought inside, as water fountains become watering holes and sunshine flows from spray guns.
On Saturday, March 16th, 2013, Lisa will present a one-night only participatory work (you may want to bring a dark bathing suit in case supplies run out). Stopgap will be on exhibit through April 20th.
Gallery Four is a 10,000 sq. ft. facility featuring six live/work artist studios and a contemporary art exhibition space. Gallery Four is located in downtown Baltimore’s H&H building.
More info: http://www.galleryfour.net/currentExhibition.html
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Spring Exhibitions
Opening Reception Tuesday, March 12, 2013 | 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Location: Evergreen Museum & Library
Price: Free admission
Reservations requested: 410.516.0341 or [email protected]
Join Evergreen Museum & Library for drinks, light refreshments, and a new season of exciting exhibitions at the spring opening reception for Perception & Ability and Herbert Haseltine: Sculptor of the Modern Age. Enjoy an open house of the museum’s first floor period rooms and galleries, opportunities to meet the exhibitions’ guest curators, and an array of unique items in the museum gift shop. More info: http://museums.jhu.edu/calendar.php?id=103
Perception & Ability
MARCH 10 – MAY 26, 2013
Perception & Ability compares and contrasts the historical with the contemporary as applied to living with physical and other challenges, exploring society’s need for labeling ability levels, and how such labeling affects perceptions. The exhibition juxtaposes the personal and professional history of Evergreen’s former owner Ambassador John Work Garrett (1872–1942), who led a successful diplomatic career while masking physical disability caused by a tubercular hip, with the lives of those facing similar challenges in today’s more open and accepting environment. Juried artworks by regional artists will be showcased next to historic objects from the Evergreen Museum & Library collection.
EXHIBITING ARTISTS: Diane Cullinan, Breon Gilleran, Matthew Saindon, Scott Sedar
Herbert Haseltine: Sculptor of the Modern Age
MARCH 10 – MAY 26, 2013
Ambassador John Work Garrett and his wife Alice befriended American expatriate sculptor Herbert Chevalier Haseltine (1877–1962) in Europe during World War I and from 1926 to 1933 added five of his works to their modern art collection at Evergreen. This exhibition affords an intimate look at the celebrated artist through the vibrant friendship he maintained with his Baltimore-based kindred spirits over 25 years. Installed in the great Main Library—originally designed to display two of Haseltine’s sculptures—the exhibition brings together works drawn from the museum’s and private collections, correspondence between Haseltine and the Garretts, and the artist’s unpublished memoir.
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Arts in Action! with contemporary artist E.L. Briscoe
Please join us this Friday March 15th for an artist talk in collaboration with Arts in Action! a Jubilee Arts Baltimore program from 5-7pm at the James E. Lewis Museum of Art at Morgan State University.
Jubilee Art’s program Arts in Action invites artists to come speak with youth about how they make their art WORK. If you want to learn how you can use art as an academic path, career choice or way to make social change, then you want to be here!
E. L. Briscoe was born in LaPlata, Maryland. He attended Charles County public schools and continued on to study visual art at Charles County Community College. He received his Bachelor of Art from Morgan State University and his Master of Fine Art from Howard University in 1998. He is currently a member of the visual arts faculty at Morgan State University.
Briscoe’s artwork visually narrates the boundaries created by socially constructed concepts of identity and race. He has artwork in the collections of the African American Museum in Dallas, Texas, the David C. Driskell Center, in College Park Maryland, the Jean and Robert Steele Collection of African American Prints, and the James E. Lewis Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland. He has exhibited work at The James E. Lewis Museum of Art, the African American Museum in Dallas, Texas, SoWeBo Gallery in Baltimore, The Creative Alliance, Baltimore, the National Black Art Show in New York, and Art-O-Matic in Washington, D.C.
Briscoe has curated exhibitions such as The Evolution of Depression Revisited: Drawings by Larry Scott at the James E. Lewis Museum of Art, Energies and Entities: Paintings by Doris C. Kennedy and Baltimore City Arts, Turning the Corner, featuring the artwork of Eugene Coles, Don Griffin, Jeffery Kent, Larry Scott, and Shinique Smith.
“What I attempt to illustrate through my art work is how an individual can communicate inner emotions, feelings, or concerns in a manner that can open a silent dialogue with individuals of a like emotional state or concern. I am a firm believer in the idea that information, inspiration and knowledge can be obtained from a number of sources. I have revistited the grass roots practices of Hip-Hop and Punk cultures that were a part of my everyday experiences in the late seventies and early eighties and married those with the formal concepts that I gained through my university education.”
