Katy Fischer’s works on paper are composed of hand-painted and cut shapes, carefully affixed to a paper substrate with a precise, yet arbitrary taxonomy. Constituencies with meandering edges and borders that float somewhere between tools, geographies, and abstracted textural tiles, fit together in enlocking compositions
Alan Prazniak shares that ambiguity between object and painting. It tends to function at a familiar, small scale for the sake of remaining, in the artist’s words, lovely and local, and to resist larger power structures. With a thick building up of gesso to create a subtle beveled edge before oil is applied to the linen, his paintings begin to take on the role of object.
Both artists work with a recurring cast of characters: each of Fischer’s shapes and fragmented ceramics shoulder personalities and idiosyncrasies, making it difficult not to imagine the tools, places, and times that they draw from. Prazniak eliminates temptation by granting full license to anthropomorphize his landscapes, with the generous addition of orbs, hats, and eyes in mountains, rivers, and meadows.
Together, these two artists present a singular yet humble perspective of a world that muddles fact and imagined realities.
