March 17 - April 28, 2018
Spencer Fidler’s practice is to collect volunteer plants from his property in Las Cruces, New Mexico and draw them daily at four times their scale. He is compelled to take only what the day offers. He quickly finds himself immersed in the complexities of the flowers and vines sorting out the veinlike leaves and blossoms. His large scale drawings present the world as a still life in a vasculum, a vessel used for collecting and studying botanical specimens. This is a practice that has overlapped his drawings and etchings of humans. Fidler’s silhouetted humans are caught diving, falling or floating and reveal limb and torsos with tangled vascular networks that reference those of plants. Fidler is an artist/scientist from the age of Enlightenment with the eye of a Romantic now living in the age of Information.
Link here for a view of images from Fidler's exhibition: VASCULUM
Image: 11-15-16 (detail); Drawing; 60 x 48 inches.