September 10 - November 5, 2022
The impossible elegance of Fergus Feehily’s painting. Its economy both of scale and means, humble (but is it?) and domestic-sized and made of the stuff of the everyday. Its humor, how apparently playful it is, even a touch absurd, and yet, deeply thoughtful and totally rigorous. Have you ever seen anything so beautiful and unhinged? I mean it’s a broken piece of wood sutured with a dirty piece of medical tape, which is just starting to peel off (oh no!). But it is so utterly serious at the same time. Look at that artist-made metallic frame. And the well, let’s admit it, opulent amber-hue…. How much of the history of 20th century art and painting is subsumed in this gesture? Duchamp, Burri, Fontana, probably more, and yet, it kind of just disappears before the unremitting, if casual pulchritude of this object. Elsewhere, fluorescent daubs of paint skittering gaily around a slate grey surface, as if applied in a state of elated distraction. Really? Is he fucking with me? Foutage de gueule? But look at the frame. The colors of it. There’s nothing distracted about any of this. And the box on the shelf? Is it a painting? It is. Look at it closely. The glittering, multi-colored sides. The importance of the role this part of painting plays in the practice of the artist cannot be overstated. Never mind the oddly sensuous surface and striations of the plywood and its almost accidental pictorial quality, which is nevertheless perfectly compelling as a picture. But then again, maybe the plywood are the sides? Conceptual, so to speak, painting at its finest, this work is blessedly devoid of the dourness associated with conceptualism. Consider the warmth and brightness of it. This is the joy of contemplation. Of painting. Of painting that is not painting. But really is. Much more so than it is conceptualism, in any event.