Francesca Fuchs, Fredericka, 2002, Acrylic on canvas, 48¡± x 48¡±, Courtesy the artist and Texas Gallery, Houston.
HOUSTON, TX.- This winter, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston will present will be on view from February 23 to April 29, 2007. Perspectives 155: Francesca Fuchs is the first solo museum exhibition for the artist and will be comprised of all new paintings created specifically for this show. Educated as a sculptor, Fuchs considers the relationship between her paintings and the architecture and space surrounding them to be a critical component of the exhibition. The images in Fuchs¡¯ most recent body of work are close-ups of infants nursing from their mother''s breast. These monumental canvases are characterized by fleshy pastel tones that emphasize the infant¡¯s self-absorption and the physical act of sucking. By approaching this often sentimentally-rendered subject from the mother¡¯s point of view and enlarging it to an unnatural size, Fuchs bypasses obvious emotions such as intimacy and tenderness, using the paintings'' enormous scale to bring what is a usually a private visual perspective to a public audience.
¡°Like Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, who used color and line to give everyday moments emotional depth, Francesca Fuchs uses decoration to capture psychological nuances,¡± said Contemporary Arts Museum Houston curator and exhibition organizer Paola Morsiani. ¡°A number of new paintings are seven by thirteen feet in size and stretch over significant portions of the gallery walls. Portraits of infants and the raw, intense expressions they are capable of alternate with still-lives of domestic furniture and floral motifs, diluting the babies¡¯ idiosyncratic stares with a sense of normalcy.¡±
Fuchs was born in London in 1965. She received her academic training in sculpture at the Wimbledon School of Art, London, and the Kunstakademie D¨¹sseldorf before moving to Houston in 1996 as an Artist-in-Residence (Core Fellow) at the Glassell School of Art of The Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Her work has been seen in exhibitions in New York, London, Munich, Prague, Edinburgh, and throughout Texas.
The exhibition will be on view from February 23 to April 29, 2007, accompanied by a Perspectives-format catalogue with reproductions of exhibited work, an essay by Morsiani, and documentation on the artist''s career. A number of education programs for adults, families, and schools will accompany these exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.