Nobu Fukui Exhibition
Stephen Haller Gallery
This event has ended.
Text plays an increasingly important role in this new series of work both in its graphic potential and in its power to communicate. New York Times critic Benjamin Genocchio wrote of Fukui’s work: “In fact, some works are so densely layered that they are a bit like bubbling cauldrons of imagery. It is part Pop Art, part potpourri, though the overall choice and arrangement of the materials always seems purposeful. How do we define Mr. Fukui’s painterly collages? The appearance of words in art is more that just decorative experimentation. It can be a radical act.”
Fukui’s work reads as non-objective painting at a distance, yet on closer observation beguiles with surprisingly provocative imagery glimpsed behind a foreground of painted circles. Circles of color dance against a background presenting a stunning homage to the art of anime and comic book heroes and heroines. The eye plays across the surface of his work as if watching a video game in giddy visual delight. Oil paint, acrylics, three-dimensional beads, collage, an allover grid of graphite, these are some of the ingredients of this exciting work. Fukui displays “a virtuoso control over his materials” in the words of critic Carter Ratcliff.
There has always been a push-pull in Fukui’s collage-based paintings of the last few years – a sensation of almost falling into the celestial spaces of the early series, or of being drawn in to the densely packed imagery of his Art in America or Superheroes series. His distinctly fresh approach creates a kind of Pollack-like frenzy of color re-inventing action painting with images.
The eye of the viewer darts between the dancing circles of the foreground and the vibrant images, and is arrested by subtle hints of text in the newspaper ground, comic book logos, or graphic expressions in the cartoon character’s balloons of text (which provide the titles of these paintings). The work provokes an engaging encounter with the viewer
[Image: Nobu Fukui "Whirlwind" (2008) Mixed media on canvas over panel, 48 x 36 in.]
Media
Schedule
from November 20, 2008 to December 23, 2008