Fractal Veiling: Carl Fudge at Deutsche Bank New York
From April 29 through June 8 2004, Deutsche Bank New York is showing
screenprints by the British artist Carl Fudge in its exhibition space at
60 Wall Street. Fudge has been living in New York for ten years; in 2003,
he was awarded a grant by the Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation.
Rhapsody Spray, 2000
Courtesy Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York (c)
Carl Fudge, New York
Visitors to the
exhibition in the newly occupied building of the Deutsche Bank New York
might well be in for a surprise. An encounter with the screenprints of the
British artist
Carl Fudge (1962) quickly recall the colorful patterns that mark the
styles of international youth scenes. It's no accident that the rich
colors and geometric/abstract patterns in the works are reminiscent of the
flagrant designs in fashion, comics, and the music industry. The artist
takes his motifs from illustrations of historical
Japanese drawings as well as from the world of
Anime and Manga comics.
Mobile Suit, 2001
Courtesy of Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York
(c) Carl Fudge, New York
Fudge follows his
own special working
method, subjecting his motifs to an elaborate process in which he employs
both digital techniques and painstaking handicraft in the drawing and
printing of the works.
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The original can be read as a blurred trace in the abstract
compositions that arise: in the series Mobile Suit (2001), robots
from popular sci-fi animation endowed with transformative powers are
distorted to appear as though they were emerging from behind a pane of
wavy glass; they could just as easily stem from historical depictions of
Japanese warriors.
The duality that emerges in this game of contrasts between
an easily consumed pop aesthetic and the culturally charged image motif
reflects the artist's role as mediator between the world of the everyday,
advertising, and glamour on the one hand and the work of art as a final
product on the other. The artist himself remains in the background.
Cliff, 2003
Courtesy Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York (c)
Carl Fudge, New York
The screenprint
Tattooed Blue (2002) forms a counterpoint to Mobile Suit and
portrays the torso of a weeping woman; the motif, borrowed from the Manga
repertoire of adult comics, is distorted in a similar way. In terms of
content, the artist has turned his attention here to the private sphere, a
theme he has also addressed in other works of the exhibition. In Cliff
(2003), he takes an erotic Ukiyo-e
image of 17th-century Japanese art to establish a reference to the
culture's rigid separation between the public and private spheres. In a
manner similar to the erotic drawings, which were only sold within a small
circle of initiates and were never intended for the public eye, Fudge
plays with the metaphoric and figurative veiling of the visual quote. His
fractal manipulations question the intelligibility of images hovering
somewhere between abstraction and representation, form and content. Not
least, they reflect the artistic dilemma manifested in the progressive
blurring of boundaries between original and reproduction.
Tatooed Blue, 2002
Courtesy Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York (c)
Carl Fudge, New York
The exhibition
can be seen Mondays through Fridays. Visitors are asked to call for an
appointment: + 001 (212) 250 3207. The artist will be speaking about his
work on premises on Thursday May 13 at 5 pm.
M.M.
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