Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of works on paper by Barnaby Furnas. This will be Furnas’ second solo show at the gallery.
This exhibition consists of approximately thirty watercolors made over the past two years. In these works Furnas continues with the traditional and divergent themes of war, suicide, desertion, love, indulgence and celebration. The watercolor is used to depict these themes, yet is also allowed to abstract itself by accident as it runs and pools. The expressionistic technique and the narrative content cooperate and allow for an investigation into the dichotomies of figure and ground - abstraction and figuration - form and formlessness. The violent and/or ecstatic events in the subject matter and formal composition of his works are integrated.
The tension Furnas creates with control and accident - form and content is key. “I think of my work as being caught in the love-what-we-fear-most kind of oppositional relationship where the oppositional conflict pronounced by the subject matter can be played out in form, figure ground and material.”*
*Barnaby Furnas is quoted from Flash Art November-December 2002.
