Vielmetter Los Angeles is pleased to present a solo exhibition by New York-based artist Louise Fishman. The exhibition, entitled We’ll Meet Again will be on view from March 27- May 15, 2021. 
 
We’ll Meet Again presents a unique perspective on Fishman’s signature approach to working with the material possibilities of paint – pairing new paintings created in her studio in upstate New York over the past year (2020) of quarantine with a selection of older works made between 1974 - 1985 from the artist's personal archive. Also on view are a selection of recent watercolors on paper and board, intimate in scale, consisting of an array of color and texture. 
 
Though painted forty plus years apart from one another, the connections between the paintings in We’ll Meet Again are abundant; from the methodology and physicality of the artist’s application of paint to her preoccupation with an intuitive painterly knowledge to the striking surfaces of each artwork made evident through inventiveness, tactility, and rigor.
 
Steeped in the practice of painting, Fishman’s very process and discipline as a painter cohesively spark the dialogue(s) between these historical and contemporary works. The installation of the exhibition aims to present an early and a current work side by side as if a series of tableaux – where the development of an artist’s visual vocabulary is also on display.

The earliest works from 1974 and 1975, were made around the time of the artist’s first solo show in NYC at Nancy Hoffman Gallery; consisting of oil and wax on irregularly shaped pieces of plywood. By 1978 the artist re-engaged with the traditionally stretched linen rectangle to create a post-ab-ex universe, inspired by travel, literature, art history, and the artist’s own identity in the world. The works from these early periods provide insight into Fishman’s early formalism, as well as her desire to deconstruct such formalism.

The five recent paintings (acrylic, oil, and flashe on canvas and linen) are full of symphonic gestures; deep blues, saturated earth tones, and brackish blacks wrestle with silvery greys, impenetrable whites, and impassioned reds.
 
Fishman’s method of applying paint becomes one of the key elements found throughout an extensive career that spans over five decades. Gestures appear and reappear, but slightly different in hue or emphasis of stroke. There is an ever-shifting seduction in the work of Louise Fishman; upon a first glance, you might believe you get it. As you come closer to the work(s), your initial experience is challenged – allowing the viewer to witness a range of expansion and contraction, a plethora of vitality, and a hidden order within the exuberant, seeming chaos.

Louise Fishman was born in 1939 in Philadelphia. In 1956 she began studying art at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, then at Stella Elkins Tyler School of Art, where she earned her BFA in Painting and Printmaking, and a B.S. in Art Education in 1963. She also studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, in Philadelphia and completed her MFA in Painting and Printmaking at the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana and headed directly to New York in 1965, where she has lived and worked ever since. Fishman has recently held solo exhibitions at Karma, New York (2020), Vielmetter Los Angeles (2019), and Locks Gallery, Philadelphia (2019). In 2016, the Neuberger Museum of Art organized the artist’s first career retrospective, curated by Helaine Posner; the retrospective traveled to the Weatherspoon Art Museum, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and was accompanied by a second exhibition at the ICA Philadelphia titled Paper Louise Tiny Fishman Rock, curated by Ingrid Schaffner. Her work is included in many public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg, PA; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; the Jewish Museum, New York, NY; among others. A retrospective of work on paper, A Question of Emphasis: Louise Fishman Drawing is forthcoming at the Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, IL (2021).