April 1 – May 6, 2000

The New York Times
Art on Paper

CARL FUDGE

April 1 – May 6, 2000

Carl Fudge will exhibit paintings and large prints at the Feldman gallery. Based on images from historical erotic Japanese prints and contemporary Japanese cartoon characters, the recent work continues the artist's interest in transformation and the relationship of the abstract to the representational. Reconfiguring sources that are three hundred years apart, one hand-made using basic technology and the other completely generated through the computer, the artist plays with disparity and stylistic similarities of the antique and the contemporary.

The exhibition divides into three parts. One group of paintings is minimal and austere: delicate black lines placed within the expanse of a white background. Other larger paintings are colorfully charged fields of patterns. The prints, optically complex, suggest both the figurative and the digital.

The linear black and white paintings are based on an eighteenth century black and white woodcut from the Ukiyo-Shunga. Computerizing a recombination of fragments of lines from a reproduction, Fudge recreates patterns of angled, unbroken lines, which are silk-screened onto a white painted board. The reorganization resembles the original source in subtle ways: the angles of the composition and a gleaming of its content. Ironically, in spite of the complexity of their making, the paintings resemble the spontaneity of surrealist automatic drawings.

The hand-painted, larger paintings deal with form and the organization of elements in space, reflecting the complexity and patterning of their original source – a color wood-block print by Kuniyoshi (1797-1861). Recomposing the image through an elaborate process, Fudge creates a collage as a template to then outline and color, matching colors to those of the original print.

The prints take as their source an image from the contemporary Japanese animation series, Sailormoon Supers, which portrays young female characters with transformative powers. The five prints, color variants of an identical composition, are made from hand-cut stencils and utilize fourteen screens. Fragmented and computerized, the reconfiguration reflects the composition and energy of the genre. The colors, both high tech and saccharine, convey the spirit of a narrative, which has as one chapter title, Pink-Sugar Heart Attack.

Carl Fudge exhibited at the Feldman Gallery in 1998 and shows regularly at venues throughout the country. Originally from London, he has lived in New York for several years. Group exhibitions include Contemporary British Artists at the Denver Art Museum and Conceptual Art as Neurobiological Praxis at Thread Waxing Space.