Carl FUDGE Builds

Galerie Richard presents ‘Builds' a solo show by Carl Fudge opening September 5 and continuing through October 14, 2018. “Builds” examines the process of construction through the act of building an image, Fudge is interested in the failures and glitches experienced with digital media as he examines the coexistence of the material physical world and the immateriality of the digital realm.

In previous works Fudge digitally manipulated historical graphic works (such as Japanese ukiyo-e prints, religious woodcuts of Durer, camouflage prints of Warhol and industrial scenes in prints by Edward Wadsworth). He built and deconstructed multiple layers of iconography giving new significance to the old. This series of works marks a departure as he focuses on the visual essence of a digital image - the pixel.

Fudge presents a series of black monochromes and allows us to see that a monochrome is a concept. The digital image is a construction of the mind, an interpretation of a more complex visual reality. These works are made with different textures of black sandpaper, meticulously cut into squares and assembled on a wood panel. Sandpaper is a tool employed in building used for both construction and deconstruction. The process is both random and repetitive. The resulting appearance resembles a low-resolution digital field of color, where the image is experienced as a jigsaw of varying shades of one hue. The illusion is created through the different grades of the sandpaper having a varying density of black grit. This juxtaposition between the physical materiality of the sandpaper and the suggestion of the immateriality of the digital realm provides a compelling contradiction.

Fudge works with different size paintings, but more importantly, works with different size units. From a painting with very small squares, he will zoom in on a detail x 2 and will make a new painting. Then he continues to zoom in on a detail x2 again and will make a third one and so on. Fudge’s practice has always accented the process of repetition and elaboration of his artworks, a trait inherent in the printed medium which he often employs.

Part of the exhibition is dedicated to two new series of prints hand printed by the artist. A set of woodcuts that resemble digital static or QR codes are both an amusing and absurd subject to be represented in this most ancient form of information dissemination and communication. The other is a series of screen prints, that also allude to representations of digital malfunction. Using the grid as a starting point each print develops into a unique impression. With these new series of works Carl Fudge makes his own unique signature as a major digital artist of this generation.

Born in London in 1962, Fudge has been living in New York since graduate school, he has been exhibiting with Galerie Richard since 2003. His works are in the collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, NY, The Boston Museum of Arts, Boston, MA, The Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, The Denver Museum of Art, Denver, CO amongst others and in Corporate collections such as Deutsche Bank and Sprint Corporation.