Claudia Fitch | Recent exhibition

The Edge of the World
May 20 - June 26, 2010
Opening reception: Thursday, May 20, 6:00 - 8:00
Artist talk: Saturday, May 22 at noon

THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, 2010
Graphite oil pastel on Strathmore drawing paper
45.5 x 37 inches
$3,300 framed
SOLD

THE EDGE OF THE WORLD - Works by Claudia Fitch

THE EDGE OF THE WORLD was a club in the 1980’s located in the DMZ in NYC’s lower east side. A former big-time catering hall, its bombed-out, cavernous, ballroom interiors still donned pieces of the original décor: exposed concrete walls with startlingly luscious remnants of draped satin. A truly postmodern environment, briefly fashionable, the club came to a violent end (the owner was found murdered on a ballroom balcony). My fond memory of a night dancing at the club surfaced while making a drawing of an elaborate 17th century Sicilian interior. The memory merged with my efforts to render, with as much authenticity as possible, the details of Sicilian cherubs with drapery. Titled THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, this drawing, and others in the exhibit, contemplates the paradoxical relationship between surface decor and deep space, between the broadly cultural and specifically personal, and between historical opulence and its destruction within contemporary time.

INTERIORS WITH STATUETTES also examines illusion and it material realities, illustrating in pencil and large format paper, the self-portrait ceramic figurines within various hypothetical and absurdly elaborate contexts. In both subject and process, the grandiose is reconciled with the modest.

As a series of drawings inspired by palatial interiors of old architectural renderings, Victorian photographs, and a recurring dream, INTERIORS considers the palace image as a quirky cosmological symbol of one’s interior life – for example, the ceiling and the celestial share a common realm. In the midst of the palace stands the statuette protagonist: modest, slightly overweight, placed and displaced within her context.

—Claudia Fitch

INTERIOR WITH STATUETTE #1 (drapery), 2009
Graphite on paper
38 x 52 inches
$3,600 framed




INTERIOR WITH STATUETTE #2 (dome), 2009
Graphite on paper
40 x 55 inches
$3,600 framed




INTERIOR WITH STATUETTE #3 (lamp), 2009
Graphite on paper
40 x 55 inches
$3,600 framed




MONTANA INTERIOR, 2008
Graphite on paper
15.5 x 24 inches
$1,500 framed





INTERIOR WITH STATUETTE, 2009
Intaglio
13 x 20 inches
State proof #4
$375





INTERIOR WITH STATUETTE (watercolor), 2009
Intaglio, watercolor on paper
13 x 20 inches
Artist proof
$500 framed





CHAIR (red), 2009
Intaglio and relief on paper
13 x 20 inches
State proof #1
$375





FASHION MODEL, 2009
Graphite on paper
24 x 50.25 inches
$1,900




STONE, 2009
Graphite on paper
17.5 x 12 inches
$900