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Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Vernon Fisher: K-Mart Conceptualism
Vernon Fisher: K-Mart Conceptualism is a survey of the artist’s entire career to date, incorporating paintings, sculptures, and installations from the late 1970s to the present, from both public and private collections in the United States and Europe.
Fisher has lived and worked in Fort Worth since 1977, and is one of Texas’s most internationally recognized artists. The exhibition is organized by Michael Auping, the Museum’s chief curator. “The show,” Auping comments, “will be a revealing look at a body of work that represents an especially interesting moment in contemporary art history in the late 1970s and early 1980s—a time when the legacies of Pop art and Conceptual art created a unique hybrid between painting and installation, inspiring narratives derived from juxtapositions of language and vernacular imagery. The subtitle of the exhibition refers to Fisher’s interest in philosophical enigmas coming out of working-class backdrops and situations.” Fisher comments, “I have an attraction to that kind of subject matter, and have written my share of pieces featuring Dairy Queens, grocery stores, Laundromats, third-rate hotels, etc.”
The exhibition will showcase the early collages that combine abstract painting, text, and image; and a selection of many of the artist’s best-known blackboard paintings, in which a faux blackboard surface is used as the ground for realistic, painted vignettes adjacent to fragments of different stories that suggest variously ambiguous meanings. A number of large, room-sized installations will also be included.
Ed Ruscha: Road Tested
Since Ruscha’s first road trip from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles in 1956, the artist has continued to engage the images he has encountered along the roads of the western United States. Consisting of approximately 75 works, spanning the artist’s entire career, Ed Ruscha: Road Tested will track key images inspired by his admitted love of driving. “I like being in the car, and seeing things from that vantage point,” Ruscha has said. “Sometimes I give myself assignments to go out on the road and explore different ideas. My books are an example of that.” The exhibition, organized by Michael Auping, the Museum’s chief curator, will include many of the artist’s most famous books, including Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations, Real Estate Opportunities, Some Los Angeles Apartments, Thirty-Four Parking Lots, and the innovative panoramic Every Building on the Sunset Strip.
This multimedia exhibition will also include some of Ruscha’s most iconic paintings, such as the Standard Stations and the Hollywood Signs, as well as paintings inspired by street names and road signs. His exploration of the topography of greater Los Angeles will be represented by paintings that depict aerial grids of the city, as well as various southern California horizons and sunsets.
Ed Ruscha: Road Tested will also explore the artist’s lifelong fascination with cars through paintings, photographs, drawings, and the rarely seen film Miracle, which tells the story of a mechanic who is magically transformed as he rebuilds the carburetor on a 1965 Mustang. In describing the exhibition, Auping explains, “Ed’s work has always been associated with the theme of travel, but amazingly an exhibition that brings together all the images that have been specifically inspired by the road has never been assembled. As Ed has said, ‘I’ve always been in group “road” shows.’ Now he has his own road show.”
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