Skip to Main Content

Vernon Fisher

Saturday, July 8, 1989Sunday, August 27, 1989

Installation view of Vernon Fisher. Photograph by Tom Loonan.

1905 Building

This exhibition was the first large-scale retrospective of the work of Texas-based artist Vernon Fisher, organized by the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, California. The 12-year survey of the internationally recognized artist highlighted Fisher's fusion of language and visual imagery that has placed him at the forefront of narrative art.

Vernon Fisher's preoccupation with archive, information transmission, memory, and taxonomy stems from an early interest in how people make sense of the world. His hallmark blackboard paintings recall pedagogical lessons or speculative renderings, oftentimes replacing sequential logic with disordered notations analogous to excerpts from an unrepressed mindscape.

The exhibition included the site-specific installation Niagara: Welcome to US, inspired by the magnetism and power of Niagara Falls, which was documented in a publication by Curator Cheryl Brutvan.

Vernon Fisher also traveled to La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art in California, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas, and the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Texas, as well as the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

A fully illustrated catalogue accompanied the exhibition, with essays by La Jolla Museum's Associate Curator Madeleine Grynsztejn and art critic Dave Hickey.

This exhibition was organized by the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art and Curator Cheryl Brutvan.

Exhibition Sponsors

This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of the Lannan Foundation, Michael Krichman and Leslie Simon, Dr. Ivor Roston and Colette Carson Royston, Iris and Matthew C. Strauss, The Barbara Gladstone Gallery and grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.