CYNTHIA DAIGNAULT, DAN FISCHER, ELLEN LESPERANCE
Makers Catalogue
JUNE 29 - AUGUST 11, 2017
OPENING RECEPTION: THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 2017, 6-8PM
Derek Eller Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of work by Cynthia Daignault, Dan Fischer and Ellen Lesperance. The artists in this exhibition have catalogued creative labor by gathering images and have built non-didactic indexes of those actions. Textiles, art historic documentation, and ephemera from the artist’s studio practice have been collected, organized and re-imagined.
In Cynthia Daignault’s Reading Room (Belgium) and Reading Room (Spring), a series of canvases are arranged face up within vitrines, alluding to a museum display of artifacts. The canvases are gestural reproductions at times rendered illegible by their painterly touch. These displays contain far-flung sources ranging from album and book covers to post-it notes. Collectively they catalogue the fleeting objects that inhabit her studio, items that indirectly guide and inspire her practice, effectively constructing an aesthetic bibliography to accompany her practice as a whole.
Dan Fischer’s meticulous drawings pay homage to deeply influential artists and artworks. An exercise in devotional realism, Fischer gathers photocopies from books and journals which he re-creates in graphite with an uncanny mechanical accuracy. Fischer employs a grid to transcribe these images while simultaneously drawing attention to their rendering. Images presented range from esoteric (a caricature of John Cage by Philip Guston) to iconic (photographic documentation of Yves Klein’s Anthropométries performances) yet each is treated with the same unwavering precision, allowing Fischer to unpack the largess of this history by losing himself in the minutia of the details.
Gouache and graphite paintings on paper by Ellen Lesperance are inspired by hand-knit clothing worn by women involved in protests and acts of civil disobedience. Several paintings stem from her work archiving such garments worn by members of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp in Berkshire, England. Through collective actions, this group utilized aesthetics of domesticity to protest nuclear armament and the housing of nuclear weapons in southern England. The patterns from their knitted garments serve as a foundation for building layered abstractions in Lesperence’s paintings while allowing her to actively and personally engage with this political history and these creative acts.
Cynthia Daignault lives and works in Baltimore, MD, and New York, NY. Solo exhibitions include Capital Gallery, San Francisco, CA; The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; Stems Gallery, Brussels, Belgium; Lisa Cooley Gallery, New York, NY; Rowhouse Project,Baltimore, MD; among others. Her paintings have been featured in museum exhibitions, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver; the Fort Worth Modern; the Brooklyn Museum. In 2017, Daignault will be exhibiting at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; MASS MOCA, North Adams, MA; and the Herron Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN.
Dan Fischer lives and works in Las Vegas, NV. He has mounted solo exhibitions at Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY; Alison Jacques Gallery, London, UK; and ACME., Los Angeles, CA. His work has been included in museum exhibitions at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany among others. His drawings are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Tate, London; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Ellen Lesperance lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Her work has been exhibited recently at the Drawing Center, New York, NY; Seattle Art Museum, WA; Ashland Art Museum, OR; Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, OR; the Dahl Arts Center, Rapid City, SD; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston Salem, NC; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, AZ; and the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford, PA. Her work is included in the collections of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Museum of Art and Design, New York; the Portland Art Museum, OR; Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, WA; and the Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco, CA. The artist has received grants and awards from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Art Matters, Pollock Krasner Foundation and the Ford Family Foundation.
Derek Eller Gallery is located at 300 Broome Street between Eldridge Street and Forsyth Street. Summer hours are Monday-Friday from 11am to 6pm. For further information please contact the gallery at 212.206.6411 or visitwww.derekeller.com.