Growing up in South Africa, Justine Fisher spent much of her childhood playing in her grandparents’ garden. “We were told that Tinkerbell lived in a specific tree,” recalls the artist. Each night, the children would leave bits of bread for the fairy, and overnight, the ever-reliable Johannesburg summer rain would melt the crumbs away, as if Tinkerbell ate them herself. This belief in looking for magic hidden in nature created an enduring emotive response that has persisted to this day. To Fisher, “nature teaches that there's a universe that exists beyond what's first apparent.”
Today, Fisher approaches her art making with that same sense of awe and curiosity, embarking on a perpetual journey of self-discovery. In her new solo show, “Breathing Room,” which opens this week at One Hour Ahead gallery (an Aspen project space founded by Calodney Advisory last year), Fisher’s imagination runs wild. Combining aspects of Pointillism, Surrealism, and Expressionism, her large-scale paintings offer a lush, verdant contrast to the frosty mountain vistas that lie outside the gallery’s windows. Standing before the canvases, which range from five to eight feet tall, the viewer is immersed in Fisher’s enigmatic nocturnal landscapes, as if they were wandering through her grandparents’ enchanting, yet ominous garden themselves.
The densely layered paintings invite careful exploration: the initial scene dissolves to reveal pure gesture, color, and form. Up close, each area of the canvas is reborn as an abstract painting. “I am attempting to create a space of extended awareness, almost like a slowing down of time as one forgets where they started and where they are going... I am trying to take away obvious references so that the viewer can engage with their own unique internal dialogue.”
In each work, the natural environment is disrupted by touches of manmade reality—a checker-tiled floor, a staircase, an open doorway, or artificial lighting confront viewers with opposing pathways, a concept that Fisher is fascinated by. This preoccupation with the multidimensionality of paths and the complexity of human consciousness has led Fisher to delve into the fascinating subject of neuroplasticity: the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through external and internal stimuli. “I find the idea of training your brain to create new paths fascinating,” says Fisher. “It’s about constant exploration.”
Anna Stothart, who curated Fisher's exhibition at One Hour Ahead, likens this visual and introspective journey to a “guided meditation: “Anyone looking at an artwork wants to find some sort of connection and root themselves. Once you provide a path or a doorway, that’s when the imagination kicks in and makes the viewer question what lies beyond,” Stothart says. “The way that Justine uses this repeated motif in her beautiful, dense environments opens the possibilities of the painting.”
“Breathing Room” is on view from February 8-25, 2023 at One Hour Ahead Gallery in Aspen.
