Barnaby Furnas

PRESS RELEASE

Barnaby Furnas

27 January – 10 March 2006

Opening reception: Friday, 27 January, 6 to 8 pm

Anthony Meier Fine Arts is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new work by New York artist Barnaby Furnas. Exhibiting at the gallery for the first time, Furnas’ paintings cleverly combine imagery depicting violence, destruction and spilt blood, revealing the mayhem and madness of conflict and war, with an aesthetic influenced by recent cinematic special effects and video game animation.

Furnas paints archetypal themes – love, death, war – that are grounded in the present but deeply aware of history. A frequent subject, and the center of this exhibition, is the Civil War.

Furnas walks the line between subject and painting, testing the limits of what painting can do in terms of depiction.  Getting the viewer to feel as close to the painting as Furnas does when making it is paramount. Conversely, getting the painting to breathe as the viewer does when looking is also essential to this delicate balance. 

Further to his goal, in this exhibition, Furnas debuts a group of paintings on stretched calfskin. A life surface, one that responds to temperature and environment, the skin bears the markings of the body that once inhabited it. This work speaks to the blood and violence depicted on its surface; it is also a reminder to look beyond the top layer in Furnas’ work. There is meat on the bone.