As the artist explains: “I paint from a position of not knowing. Generating diverse narrative associations by juxtaposing various layers of signification, the works in My Old Neighborhood present affecting situations which retain a degree of uncertainty and evade direct social or political interpretation. Using photographs and collage as starting point, Fischl constructs compositions which oscillate between collective dramas and individual renderings of human nature, pinpointing moments imbued with unresolved conflict and existential angst.
In The Old Man Stays Behind, three masked individuals attend to the naked protagonist suggesting a promise of human connection, yet emphasising one’s feeling of vulnerability among others, transformed and heightened by the events of the past eighteen months.
#Eric fischl vgallery skin#
In Private Property, an unclothed woman is confronted by policemen, the bright sunlight shimmering on the skin to exacerbate her defencelessness and the strangeness of the scene. Often shown naked amid clothed street observers, the figures project a sense of fragility and unease. Houses and cars form a grid-like backdrop of angular colour fields yet look unused and detached from the scenes unfolding in the foreground.Ĭonstructing inexplicable emotional tension, Fischl’s poignant compositions portray mundane scenes of a residential neighborhood which border on the sense of emergency.Ĭitizens of suburban dystopias, Fischl’s characters rarely make eye contact, struggling to connect with each other. Engaged in personal reflections, the characters appear exposed, as if driven to the street by an unknown force. Here, Fischl’s protagonists are sharing moments of improbable intimacy and proximity in the public space – the realm, distinct from the sense of privacy permeating the artist’s earlier explorations of the other side of the American Dream. One of the central themes in the artist’s oeuvre, the vision of American suburban life has fuelled some of his most resonant and provocative works. Fischl became well known for psychologically intense paintings, where extraordinary dreamlike scenes take place in suburban settings.In My Old Neighborhood, Fischl stages moments of human interactions set outdoors, on daylit sidewalks and front yards of suburban streets. In the late 1970s and early 80s, Eric Fischl’s work helped reinvest the traditional medium of painting with contemporary relevance. Louis Art Museum, Louisiana Museum of Art in Denmark, Musée Beaubourg in Paris, and many others. Fischl had his first solo show at Dalhousie Art Gallery in Nova Scotia in 1975 before relocating to New York City in 1978.įischl’s paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints have been the subject of numerous solo and major group exhibitions, and his work is represented in many museums, as well as prestigious private and corporate collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modem Art in New York City, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, St. In 1974, he moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to teach painting at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. from the California Institute for the Arts in 1972. He began his art education in Phoenix, where he attended Phoenix College and earned his B.F.A. Fischl was born in 1948 in New York City and grew up in the suburbs of Long Island.
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