Eric Fischl Exhibition
Mary Boone Gallery (Midtown)
This event has ended.
Dating from 1992 to 2011, the works in the exhibition range from sketched portraits cropped to the face, to commanding single figures, to complex arrangements of couples, families, or groups. As in the fraught suburban scenes for which he first rose to prominence, with each approach to portraiture Fischl demonstrates his mastery of conjuring form and light from paint to communicate the psychological bearing of his subjects.
A highlight of the exhibition is three large group portraits painted at intervals of several years that depict the Artist and his circle of friends at the beach. The earliest, The Gang (2006), is a congregation of sun-enveloped bodies with paraphernalia suggesting an extended day of revelry. Saint Barts Ralph’s 70th (2009) presents a smaller group, parched in bright light, bags packed and seemingly on the move -- a record of transition that is echoed in the painting’s title. The third, the most recent work in the exhibition, is Self-Portrait: An Unfinished Work (2011), an unsettling painting within-a-painting in which the Artist sits facing the viewer with his back to an unfinished canvas. Here, the friends Fischl portrays are pressed toward the front of the picture plane by dark rocks and waves. At the center of this group a conspicuously incomplete figure, presumably a surrogate for the Artist himself (who, until now, has been absent from the gatherings) hovers above the foreground self-portrait. Fischl allows us to see the Artist, so adept at capturing others, wrestling with seeing himself.
Media
Schedule
from February 11, 2012 to March 17, 2012
Opening Reception on 2012-02-11 from 17:00 to 19:00