
Trace 1: after Threshold SouthWest - One [ spectrum: yellow ], 2016
Ink on UV paper
11.5 x 17.5 inches, paper; 12 x 18 inches, framed
Trace 3 : after Threshold SouthEast One [ spectrum: yellow ], 2010 / 13
Gouache on UV paper
11.5 x 17.5 inches, paper, 12 x 18 inches, framed
Trace 4: after Threshold, SouthWest - Two [ Spectrum: green ], 2010
Ink on UV paper
11.5 x 17.5 inches, paper; 12 x 18 inches, frames
Study for Threshold - Plan, SouthEast - Two [orange with blue] #2, 2017
Gouache on paper
23 x 22 inches, paper; 25.125 x 23.875 x 1.5 inches, framed.
Study for Threshold - Plan, North [ blue with orange ] #2, 2017
Gouache on paper
23 x 22 inches, paper, 25.125 x 23.875 x 1.5 inches, framed.
Study for Threshold - Plan, North [blue with orange on blue] #2, 2016
Gouache on paper
15.25 x 22 inches, paper, 16.75 x 23.5 inches, framed
MMW scalino profile: NorthEast-two, 2007
Gouache and flasche on Fabriano paper
10 x 23 inches, paper, 12 x 25 inches, framed
Study for South Wall, Bricks and Siding, 1996
Gouache on paper
15 x 30 inches, paper; 17.5 x 32.5 inches, framed
Lumine IV: asunder [twilight], 2017
Oil on canvas
23 x 27 inches
Study for Entry Borders and Corners #1, 1999
Gouache on paper
22.5 x 30 inches
Inclusively and theoretically, Julia Fish’s (b. Toledo, 1950) work can be characterized as both site-generated and context-specific: in temporary projects / installations, and in the on-going sequence of paintings and works on paper developed in response to a close examination of the experience of living and working within her home and studio, a 1922 two-story brick storefront in Chicago. Fish has described this process as one which “opens onto questions and critical approaches to the practice of painting, to drawing, and to the nuances and implications of representation / re-presentation.” Concurrent and influential research interests include the related disciplines of architecture, architectural history and theory.
After completing studies for the BFA and MFA degrees in Oregon and Maryland, respectively, Fish relocated to Chicago in 1985. Her work has been presented in twenty-seven solo exhibitions since 1980, and has twice been the subject of 'ten-year' survey exhibitions. Most recently, Julia Fish : bound by spectrum, DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, 2019-2020; and View, The Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, 1996. National/ international exhibitions include, among others: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; MAK Center for Art and Architecture / Schindler House, Los Angeles; Tang Museum, Skidmore College; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; Galerie Remise, Bludenz, Austria; 2010, the Whitney Biennial, and Homebodies, MCA Chicago, 2013.
Paintings and works on paper are included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Denver Art Museum; Yale University Art Gallery; The Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago; University of Michigan Museum of Art; and Illinois State Museum, Springfield. Her work is represented by Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, and David Nolan Gallery, New York.
Julia Fish’s studio work and research has been supported by grants and fellowships awarded by the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts/Painting; Richard H. Driehaus Foundation; Cal Arts-Alpert/Ucross Foundation; she also received competitive research-travel funding from the University of Illinois at Chicago. DePaul Art Museum was awarded exhibition and publication funding for Julia Fish : bound by spectrum, from The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Julia Fish is Professor Emerita, School of Art and Art History, and UIC Distinguished Professor.
Artists Rodney McMillian and Julia Fish join exhibition co-curator Caitlin Haskell, Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art in conversation about Cezanne. Julia Fish and Rodney McMillian, both of whom contributed to the exhibition catalogue, will explore Cezanne’s art-making practice and why it continues to resonate.
Some months back, I received a kind invitation on your behalf: would I take a look at your Three Skulls (Trois Crânes)—the watercolor’d one—to note some thoughts and then, prospectively, to further shape my “seeing” for intended publication? My “yes” confirmed: it would be an honor and a privilege.
Fish’s artworks elude every attempt to enclose them in language, and they resist explanation. They become something only a painting can be.
This essay was written in March 2020 after the exhibition Julia Fish : bound by spectrum closed at the DePaul Art Museum.
Now, six months later, our lives have been dramatically altered and constrained. Wracked by devastating losses from the COVID-19 pandemic, the challenges posed by current political realities and perilous climate changes, many of us, limited to virtual screens,
have sheltered in place. During days of self-quarantine, our surroundings have become spaces of confinement and refuge. Julia Fish’s attentive representation of domestic realities
and infinite, even metaphysical transformations become imaginative models for how we might experience this elongated moment.
Paradoxically, looking at these artworks, based on spectral precision and poetic revision, we are compelled to consider existence beyond the frames.
Fish’s gorgeous thresholds, always prescient, are even more urgent.
John Yau of Hyperallergic reviwes Julia Fish's recent survey at the DePaul Art Museum, bound by spectrum. Yau celebrates Fish's keen observation and rigorous commitment to the "small sensations" of her physical space. He notes the uniqueness of her practice which "collapses the long-held fiction that painters paint and conceptual artists think." Fish's steadfast mapping of her own domestic space is ever more relevent during quarantine, Yau explains, as her work questions: "how far does any one of us have to go in order cross the threshold from one space (or world) to another? What does it mean to pay attention to what is underfoot, to our passage in the familiar, ever-changing spaces of everyday life? How does invention differ from production?"
Alex Jen provides a heartfelt, in depth review of bound by spectrum, Julia Fish's recent survey show at DePaul Art Museum.
Review of the artist's show Bound by Spectrum at the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago, IL.
Review of Julia Fish: Floret at David Nolan Gallery.
Review of Threshold II at Rhona Hoffman Gallery.
Review of Between: Stairs and Landings at Rhona Hoffman Gallery