The public rooms of a home never have chicken wallpaper. Those rooms are reserved for parrots and tanagers. The chickens are reserved for the kitchen wallpaper. And chicken tschotschkes are kitsch.
But Eric Fausnacht's chickens and roosters at Muse Gallery are birds of a different feather. In a way, his paintings and prints that seem to be reproductions of his paintings, make the case for chickens as dandies and grandees. Their plumage is spectacular, at least as Fausnacht paints feathers. And the cockscombs are baroque, looking more like the velvety flower of the same name than like my personal image of a cockscomb.
November 2006 rooster prints 007, Eric Fausnacht
Just in case you missed his point (I asked in an email why he paints chickens and he sidestepped.), Fausnacht adds wallpaper like patterns--stripes and arabesques behind and sometimes over the birds. And he's also thinking about their relationship to the paint in the ones he drips over.
November 2006 rooster prints 003, by Fausnacht
The conversation between the extremely representational creatures and the paint and the patterns is a conversation about realism and painterliness, one worth having in the presence of such fastidious realism and a nice reminder that these are chickens that have been reinvented through the artist's eye.
In a way, I think Fausnacht has found a place where academy-style painting has a voice in the contemporary conversation. (Fausnacht, after graduating from Millersville with a degree in art education, took course at both University of the Arts and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, according to his online resume).
Orange Dream, by Ann Craven, 2006, oil on canvas, 48 x 36
The work reverberates with and against the airy pink paintings of Ann Craven, whose casual brushiness of colorful birds on their traditional branches seem to be more about feminine boudoirs and highbrow taste in decoration.
Paintings, 2006, 002, by Eric Fausnacht
This is not Fausnacht's subject, really. He is more about challenging that taste, capturing the not-quite-wild life in rather airless indoor settings--and perhaps masculinizing the decorative impulse. His birds stand on firm ground. After all, they are chickens.
I got an email from Mike Houston, one of the Cannonball Press "arms of steel," (the other is Martin Mazorra) saying the experts in edgy black-and-white print production were showing new works, big works, little works and cheap and not-so-cheap works in an exhibit at David Krut Fine Art in Chelsea. The opening's this Thursday night and the show goes to Feb. 10.
We at artblog are big fans of the Brooklyn-based Cannonballers, who famously came to Philly's Space 1026 last summer and showed massive works including a print-covered sculptural monolith, and then screenprinted our t-shirts with their fine art for free in a day-long workshop! Posts here and here.
Cannonball Press presents: Treasure of the Black & White Brigand A Centuries Old Tale of Lost Loot Told in Woodcut Jan. 16th to Feb. 10th Reception January 18 6-8pm David Krut Fine Art 526 West 26th Street, #816 New York, NY 10001 (212) 255-3094