TONY FEHER PRESENTS HIS FIRST SOLO EXHIBITION AT
PACEWILDENSTEIN, 32 EAST 57TH STREET, NYC
MARCH 21 – APRIL 26, 2008
RUNS CONCURRENTLY WITH AN EXHIBITION AT D’AMELIO TERRAS GALLERY AND THE
ARTIST’S PUBLIC ART FUND PROJECT ON VIEW IN BROOKLYN
THROUGH SEPTEMBER 1, 2008
NEW YORK, February 27, 2008—In his first solo show with PaceWildenstein, Tony Feher will exhibit new sculpture from 2007-2008. A public opening reception for Tony Feher will be held on Thursday, March 20th from 6-8 p.m.
The exhibition, on view at PaceWildenstein’s 57th Street location from March 21 through April 26, 2008, includes works placed directly on the floor, suspended from the ceiling or applied to the windows or walls of the gallery. In her catalogue essay, Laura Richard Janku compares Feher’s sculptural practices to the improvisational virtuosity of Ella Fitzgerald, “Like the legendary scatters, Tony Feher intuitively uses familiar pattern, variation, allusion, and quotation to produce transcendent artworks that are anchored formally, but soar with innovation, personality, humor, and catharsis.”
Concurrently, Feher will exhibit a group of early works from 1990 to 1996 at D'Amelio Terras, 525 West 22nd Street, New York. Many of these works are considered seminal to his practice, reflecting the origins of the artist's most recognizable motifs, such as the honey jar and the marble. The exhibition will be on view from March 22 through April 26, 2008.
Rooted in the legacy of minimalism, Feher's post-conceptual aesthetic emphasizes the importance of seeing objects for what they are. Whether it is an unwieldy coil of neon monofilament exploding from the mouth of an open jar or bright marbles resting atop a collection of choreographed empty bottles, Feher accentuates the characteristics inherent in his materials. Employing an economy of means, Feher's investigations of found and discarded materials result in sculptures of fluid line, thoughtful rhythms and a sensation of color and light.
These gestures, whether indoors or situated within the surrounding environment, have come to include many large-scale works that integrate uniquely with each situation. Feher realized four of these projects in 2007. In Some Time Soon, an installation at The Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi, the artist used signature materials: blue plastic bags, clear bottles and tape to imply, as Dan Cameron suggested in the exhibition catalogue, “an extended field of visual relationships….These fields of affinity, once established, can encompass the entire site where the pieces are seen, spilling over into architecture, natural settings, and even other artworks. Since the sculpture exists as much to be looked around and looked through as looked at, there is really no determined point where the fields of affinity fall away, although our sensitivity to them might grow fainter.”
Last year, The Indianapolis Museum of Art commissioned Feher to create an inaugural work for the new Efroymson Entrance Pavilion. A Single Act of Carelessness Will Result in the Eternal Loss of Beauty defined the sun-drenched space (approximately 30' high) with an undulating wave of hot pink liquid-filled bottles suspended from a rig of twine and ropes wrapped high on the supporting architectural columns. Feher emphasized the formal aspects of the Pavilion through a series of simple actions that created a space within the space. In 2007 Feher also participated in Like Color in Pictures, an international group show at the Aspen Art Museum, as well as Everyday Eden, a Public Art Fund Project at Brooklyn's MetroTech Center where the artist appropriated a grove of trees to support his free form sculpture A little bird told me. Everyday Eden is on view through September 1, 2008.
Tony Feher (b. 1956, Albuquerque, New Mexico) received a B.A. from The University of Texas in 1978. The artist began exhibiting his work in 1980 and by 1991, was showing both nationally and internationally. Since that time Feher's sculpture has been featured in over 140 gallery and museum exhibitions worldwide. Important solo exhibitions include Red Room and More at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College in 2001, a version of which later traveled to the Hammer Museum in Los Angles. In 2002, the Worcester Art Museum featured Maybe /Enjoy.
In 2003, Tony Feher was invited to participate in Poetic Justice, the 8th International Istanbul Biennial. With little more than rolls of blue artist tape Feher installed Nature is Over, utilizing existing architectural details and referencing the stained-glass tradition, on an entire wall of windows in the monumental space of the Hagia Sophia.
Feher was a featured artist at the Chinati Foundation's Open House in 2005. Other solo shows have included Broadway Window Project, New Museum of Contemporary Art (1996), ASISWAS, Storefront for Art and Architecture (2000), I'm Tired of Toast, Berkeley Art Museum (2002), La Fundación "La Caixia" Lleida, Spain and The Centraal Museum, Utrecht, The Netherlands, both in 2004.
Feher's work is part of numerous public collections, including The Art Institute of Chicago; Baltimore Museum of Art; Des Moines Art Center; La Colección Jumex, Mexico City; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Whitney Museum of American Art; and Worcester Art Museum, among others.
Tony Feher has lived in New York City since 1981.
For more information on Tony Feher and the current exhibition please contact Jennifer Benz Joy, Public Relations Associate, at 212-421-3292 or via email at jjoy@pacewildenstein.com.