ELYSIUM VERTO – PARADISE IS CHANGING
Elysium Verto
Curated by Laurence Fuller
March 2018
Los Angeles, California
The epochal and transforming convulsions in the shape of our world is causing ruptures in civilization. The ice flows are breaking up, the earths plates are shifting and clutching together to form something new. But what is happening to us? History is being re-written.
When our world changes so do human dreams, our vision of paradise is transformed by the swelling sky. The air tastes different, birds flock south to a different home, flowers grow from uncommon rocks, fish spawn in unknown rivers.
Cascading corridors line the ridges of the deep, and its endless volcanic reach into the dark pushes up the ancient into something new. History is being re-written in our minds, conclusions are unfinished, but its images in nebulous states provide omens of the coming reformation.
Now the fluidity of form, now the ambiguity of edge, now the indecision of matter and the stretching fabric of existence.
Heroes taste tomorrows plunder on the grass and its speculation morphs their vision of Elysium.
Waves make up for boundaries unresponsive containment of our thoughts, it all comes flooding out in pulses of feeling and we stand in awe at the charge of a new being.
Paradise is changing.
Stephanie Fuller Flower Paintings
Lilium 2018, By Stephanie Fuller, Oil on Canvas, 48 x 48 in, © Stephanie Fuller
My first memory of art, walking through the living room in my home in Bath at three years old. To an open door on my right typing persistently away in what was later to be described to me by his closest friends was an unrelenting tapping, as my father sat his typewriter. The study was littered with books, from floor to ceiling, strewn across the floor in a frantic manner, much like what I later found to be his style of writing. Which encompassed a huge broad range of thought mostly circulating his inner social group of art world intelligentsia in England.
© Stephanie Fuller
Next door was my mother’s studio, big windows opening up onto the garden, a flame of red curls that was her hair, would lash across the space as she carved out some new figure from stone or cast. The studio was always covered in plaster and rusted tools that she kept on workman’s table tops away from tiny hands. Out poured relics of the myth of my childhood, the vanitas objects of meaning, the symbols of life and death, Memento Mori.
When she transitioned to the brush it was an event, not just because her sculpture had become rarer still, but because it was a reshaping of her vision into a new medium. The landscapes and natural Australian forms of her past now took their shape in pigment and movements of color. Following on from the post-impressionists and the fine art tradition pursuing man and woman’s search for beauty.
Lilies 2018, By Stephanie Fuller Oil on Canvas, 48 x 48 in, © Stephanie Fuller
These new flower paintings, not unlike Bacon, are almost figurative pieces, the flower represented in its singularity as having a personality. When Van Gogh painted his flowers he was said to be painting at the manic rate of around three paintings a day, in all states of blossoming and wilting, on the edge of death, grasping onto the preciousness of life. The way these two artists see the world comes out in this same kind of paradox, this obsession with life and death fuels them to master their craft. For Fuller these flowers have a life beyond a pleasing decorative object, but a part of this ecosystem, and more like something fundamental to our planet. That is both fragile, necessary and constantly changing.
Orchids 2018, By Stephanie Fuller, Oil on Canvas, 48 x 48 in
© Stephanie Fuller
Red 2012, By Stephanie Fuller, Acrylic on Canvas, 60 x 92 1/2 in
© Stephanie Fuller
Sculptures
Skull 1996, By Stephanie Fuller, Bronze Ed 1/6, 7 x 9 1/4 x 6 in
Lemon 1996, by Stephanie Fuller, Bronze Ed 4/6, 81/2 x 3 1/2 x 4 1/2 in
Marron 1994, By Stephanie Fuller, Bronze 1/3, 18 x 6 1/2 x 8 in
Bowl of Fruit 1995, By Stephanie Fuller, Bronze Ed 4/6, 13 x 8 1/2 x 10 in
Pear 1996, By Stephanie Fuller, Bronze. Ed. I/VI 46 x 32 x 32 cm (approx)
Fish, Garlic and Chilli 1993, By Stephanie Fuller, Bronze ed. I/VI, 19.5 x 38 x 31 cm
Plate of Olives 1994, By Stephanie Fuller, Bronze ed. I/VI, 6 x 28.5 x 21.5 cm
Other Artists
Yurramurana 1984, By Brett Bailey, Acrylic on Canvas, 80 1/2 x 67 in
Blinded by sunshine and rain, I see clearly, 2001, By Brett Bailey, Acrylic on Canvas, 72 x 48 in
Winter Garden II, By Brett Bailey, Acrylic on Canvas, 84 x 26 in
Behind Horizons 2004, By Claudia Chaseling, Egg Tempera and Oil on Canvas, 84 x 66 1/2 in
Drifting (01) 2003, By Claudia Chaseling, Egg Tempera and Oil on Canvas, 67 x 59 in
Behind 2004, By Claudia Chaseling, Egg Tempera and Oil on Canvas, 71 x 48 1/2 in
Study of the human body (from a drawing by Ingres), 1982 Francis Bacon Colour lithograph on arches, A/P aside from the edition of 180, published by Galerie Lelong, Paris, plate size 62 x 46.5 cm, sheet size 104.5 x 74.7 cm
The Song Of Ophelia (Act 4, Scene 5) 1834, Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix, Lithograph, on mounted China paper, Image Size 10.2 x 8.2 in, Frame Size 26.5 x 22.5 in, With rare collectors stamps as proof of provenance in the bottom left corner.
Plate 46. from Los Caprichos 1799, Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, Los Caprichos, “Correccion” Original Etching, Second Edition, Plate – H 8.5in x W 6in, Image – H 7.5in x W 5in, Frame – H 23.5in x W 22.2in
Disasters Of War, Muertos Recogidos, 1811-12, 3rd Edition, Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes), Etching and burnished aquatint, Platemark 6 1/8 x 8 3/16 in
Mornington Crescent 1998, Peter Howson, Etching, Edition 11/25, 19 ¾ x 17 ¾ in
Dollis Hill 1998, Peter Howson, Etching, Edition 11/25, 19 3/4 x 17 3/4 in
Alec 1988, Peter Howson, Etching, Edition 11/30, 22 ¼ x 15 in
The Questioning 1978/9, By Sir Sidney Nolan, PART OF Ned Kelly II, Screenprint on paper, Edition 67/75 Plate 19 x 25 in, Sheet 23 x 29 in, Signed bottom right.
Floral Composition 1972, By Sir Sidney Nolan, Screenprint, Edition 15/70 Plate 20 1/2 x 18 in Sheet 26 x 20 in, Signed bottom right.
Pallas Athena – From Die Odysse 2, By Oskar Kokoscha, Lithograph, signed edition of 50, P., S.57.5 x 40 cm
Saul and David, 1969 Kokoshka, Oscar, Lithograph on handmade paper, edition c (proof for the artist), 42.5 x 32.5 cm, signed lower right