Joe Fyfe
But a flag has flown away
January 4 - February 10, 2019
The title of the exhibition is meant to evoke materiality, lightness and distance, qualities important to my practice. It is a phrase taken from “Exiled Grace,” one of the poems in the book Calligrammes (1913-1916) by Guillaume Apollinaire, written while he was a soldier serving in World War I.
Each painting utilizes a poem from the book. Il Pleut came about capriciously. I imposed the Apollinaire poem over the variegated surface of the support. It felt cheeky to apply this beloved modernist poem–as important to literary history as art history–as an organizing motif for a painting.
When I finished the Il Pleut painting, I had to understand it. I thought of the Giorgio Agamben essay, “What is the Contemporary?” I had been wondering, how do you feel the present? How do you frame it? One of Agamben’s conclusions was that one must “transform the present, putting it in relation with other times.”
Soon after I discovered the Marxist cultural critic Mark Fisher, now deceased, who described in his book, Ghosts of My Life “the slow cancellation of the future” how neo-liberal capitalism has “systematically deprived artists of the resources necessary to produce the new” resulting in art that tended towards “retrospection and pastiche.”
Similarly, perhaps, I have always tried to achieve something like stasis in my work, as if I had all the time in the world-like Baudelaire perusing the Salons-in opposition to the compulsive, purposeless dynamism of capitalism.
I wished not to prod nor distract the viewer, but to problematize the relationship between the viewer and the artwork. I sought an anachronistic relationship to the present as way of moving outside of history, or at least the panicked environment of hyper-consumerism, by refusing to over-stimulate the eye and by attempting to avoid the flourish.
Other aspects of the Calligrammes paintings have other precedents. Their compositions, for example, share something with French painter Claude Viallat, a big influence, whose own emphasis on materiality seems to conflate Matisse with Brecht, being both decorative and political. Viallat’s painted patterns are introduced over re-purposed objects often made from industrial or commercial fabrics.
Another conscious model for this series was the Robert Altman film, Short Cuts in which the plots of a half-dozen Raymond Carver stories are yanked from their Pacific Northwest settings and cobbled into an episodic narrative set in Los Angeles. Here, Altman demonstrated that to genuinely respect borrowed material you must be ruthless with it.
Apollinaire called himself “a traveling spectator of the world,”: the cloth, flags and signage that make up my surfaces have been collected during international travels. But I know very little French. So, even though I had translations at hand, my experience of painting the texts has been an appreciation of their appearance.
The 100th anniversary of the Armistice occurred just as I finished up this series. There is portrait of the Apollinaire by Picasso that serves as a frontispiece in the original edition, in which the poet is seen with a head wound wrapped in bandages. The canvas strips adhered to the surfaces of some of the paintings correspond to the bandages wrapped around Apollinaire’s head.
–Joe Fyfe December, 2018
About Joe Fyfe
Joe Fyfe (b. 1952 in New York, New York) is based in New York City. He repurposes found materials like kites, signs, and banners to reveal the poetic beauty within overlooked everyday objects. Culled from daily refuse—particularly that of impoverished areas in Southeast Asia—Fyfe’s work documents regional transitions and globalization. They are deliberately nonrepresentational, allowing materials to dictate form and come together on their…
Press
- Artadia, Awardee Spotlight, A Dialogue with Joe Fyfe, 2019
- Two coats of paint, Heather Bause Rubinstein, The materiality of written language, 2019
- Artcritical, David Cohen, Joe Fyfe: but a flag has flown away at Nathalie Karg, 2019
- Timeout, The top 5 New York art shows this week, 2019
- Artforum, Must see, 2019
Joe Fyfe / But A Flag Has Flown Away
Le Jet d’eau
2018
cotton, acrylic, canvas, vinyl
80h x 68w in (203.20h x 172.72w cm)
Tour Eiffel
2018
acrylic, cotton, nylon
80h x 68w in (203.20h x 172.72w cm)
Éventail des Saveurs
2018
Acrylic, cotton, nylon
80h x 68w in (203.20h x 172.72w cm)
Coeur, couronne et miroir
2018
acrylic, cotton, nylon
80h x 68w in (203.20h x 172.72w cm)
Paysage
2018
acrylic, cotton, vinyl, canvas, burlap, nylon, muslin
80 x 68 in (203.20 x 172.72 cm)
La Cravate
2018
acrylic, cotton, canvas, nylon
80h x 68w in (203.20h x 172.72w cm)
Il Pleut
2018
canvas, nylon, cotton, linen, acrylic
108h x 64w in (274.32h x 162.56w cm)
Visée
2018
canvas, nylon, cotton, acrylic
108h x 64w in (274.32h x 162.56w cm)
Loin du pigeonnier
2018
canvas, ink, acrylic, cotton, nylon
108h x 70 3/4w in (274.32h x 179.71w cm)
Installation View
Installation View
Installation View
Installation View
Installation View
Installation View
Installation View
Éventail des Saveurs
2018
acrylic, cotton, nylon
80h x 68w in (203.20h x 172.72w cm)
Coeur
2018
acrylic, cotton, nylon
80h x 68w in (203.20h x 172.72w cm)
La Cravate
2018
acrylic, cotton, canvas, nylon
80h x 68w in (203.20h x 172.72w cm)
Le Jet d'eau
2018
cotton, acrylic, canvas, vinyl
80h x 68w in (203.20h x 172.72w cm)
Paysage
2018
acrylic, cotton, vinyl, canvas, burlap, nylon, muslin
80 x 68 in (203.20 x 172.72 cm)
Tour Eiffel
2018
acrylic, cotton, nylon
80h x 68w in (203.20h x 172.72w cm)
Loin du pigeonnier
2018
canvas, ink, acrylic, cotton, nylon
108h x 70 3/4w in (274.32h x 179.71w cm)
Visée
2018
canvas, nylon, cotton, acrylic
108h x 64w in (274.32h x 162.56w cm)
Il Pleut
2018
canvas, nylon, cotton, linen, acrylic
108h x 64w in (274.32h x 162.56w cm)
Publications
But a flag has flown away
The title of the exhibition is meant to evoke materiality, lightness and distance, qualities important to my practice. It is a phrase taken from “Exiled Grace,” one of the poems in the book Calligrammes (1913-1916) by Guillaume Apollinaire, written while he was a soldier serving in World War I. Each painting utilizes a poem from […]
$ 10 USD
Buy NowRead MoreUpcoming & related exhibitions
Rannva Kunoy
Rannva Kunoy
April 20 - May 29, 2021
View Exhibition
Won’t You Be My Neighbor
Peter Barrickman, Seth Cameron, Antoine Catala, Anna Condo, Jessica Craig-Martin, Jane Dickson, Jim Drain, Joe Fyfe, Dorian Gaudin, Heidi Hahn, Paul Hosking, Simon Ko, Rannva Kunoy, John Lee, Jesse Mockrin, Bridget Mullen, Nathlie Provosty, Gamaliel Rodriguez, Elsa Sahal, Myles Starr, Alice Tippit and Tim Wilson.
October 28 - December 31
View Exhibition
JOE FYFE
Kiss the Sky
September 14 - October 23, 2016
View Exhibition