Emily Furr “Metal Heart”

Sargent's Daughters

[Image: Emily Furr "Metal Heart" (2022) Oil and acrylic on board, wood frame, 11 x 11 in.]

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Sargent’s Daughters presents Metal Heart, an exhibition of new paintings by Brooklyn-based artist Emily Furr, occurring in conjunction with a solo presentation of her works at The Armory Show in September. This is Furr’s third solo exhibition with the gallery.

In this new body of work, Furr draws upon Precisionism, Surrealism, and Pop Art to make work that feels both timeless and profoundly timely. These sharp-edged, saturated paintings, all rendered in oil, depict nails stabbing gemstones, machines spewing out reels of stars, and missiles penetrating the sky. Though their content is almost mystical, the style of the works draws to mind billboard advertisements or propaganda posters. They bring to mind militarism and violence, with symbols that imply the presence of political or personal unrest.

Metal Heart is a continuation of Furr’s inquiry into human attempts to control the uncontrollable, producing disorienting images which insert intimately terrestrial objects into galactic star-scapes. In each composition, Furr produces unexpected juxtapositions of scale. She achieves this either by placing commonplace items into seemingly infinite settings, or by allowing a glimpse of the cosmos through the cracks of the quotidian. In either case, the viewer is exposed to the incommensurability of the two realms, suggesting the futility of human development and consumption.

Engaging themes of industrialism, transformation, and the cosmic void, Furr’s work speaks to the fragility of human exploits in the face of the vastness of the universe. Yet despite the danger, one can’t help but feel ensnared in their orbit.

Emily Furr (b. 1978, St. Louis, MO) is a New York based visual artist who received her MFA from Hunter College, NY in 2018. Furr has had two solo exhibitions at Sargent’s Daughters. In 2019, she was an artist in residence at the Watermill Center, Watermill, NY. She has exhibited at 12.26, Dallas, TX; Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco, CA; Maria Bernheim Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland; Achenbach Hagemeier, Berlin, Germany; Galerie Hussenot, Paris, France; as well as being featured on the cover of New American Paintings’ 25th Anniversary Edition. In February of 2021, Furr opened her first museum solo exhibition at the SCAD Museum, Savannah, GA, curated by Ariella Wolens, assistant curator of SCAD exhibitions. Furr’s work has recently been acquired by the Orange County Museum of Art, Orange County, CA. Her work has been reviewed in Artnet, Artforum, Hyperallergic, Burnaway, and Time Out New York. In September of 2022, she will present a solo booth of new work at The Armory Show, New York. She is represented by Sargent’s Daughters.