Seven new paintings by Kim Fisher will be on view in New York City at John Connelly Presents (JCP) for a special exhibition of works originally commissioned by the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum. To create this new body of work, the artist, working with the curators of invertebrate zoology and malacology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, studied and researched the museum’s renowned collection of exotic shells. Using her observations on the natural forms, textures, patterns, shapes and colors of shells, Fisher has created a beautiful and fascinating new series of paintings which reflect upon and dialogue with the artist’s earlier exploration of gemology, fashion, abstraction and the lunar cycles.

Kim Fisher received her MFA from Otis College of Art and Design in 1998, and her BA from the University of California in 1996, both in Los Angeles. She has had solo exhibitions at China Art Objects, Los Angeles; John Connelly Presents, New York; Shane Campbell, Chicago, and the Modern Institute, Glasgow. Fisher exhibits internationally and participated in the 2004 Whitney Biennial at The Whitney Museum of American Art and the 2004 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, California.

The artist is included in the new Phaidon publication Painting Abstraction: New Elements in Abstract Painting by Bob Nickas. Regarding the work Nickas writes “Consider [Fisher’s] work as it hangs in the gallery: the painted surface, the color, the hard edge of the image, the straight edge of the stretcher, and the irregular folds of linen. Our gaze moves from the flatness of the wall to the contours of the draped material to the flatness of the painting’s surface. Here, the entire painting is the object, but with heightened contrast. There is play between the smooth surface of color at the service of the image and its geometry, while the color on the linen folds may appear stained or to have bled. The lushness of the paint is juxtaposed with rough areas of unpainted linen. There is the hardness of the image and the softness of the material it’s been painted on. Finally there is the structural integrity of the image and the fragility of the object on which it has been set to rest. Duality is ever-present in Fisher’s work. It is elegant and awkward, formal and deformed, hard and soft, painted and unpainted, polished and raw, illusory and real.”

In his review of the book in The Nation, Barry Schwabsky writes: “In Painting Abstraction, Nickas presents a broad survey of recent efforts in the field, ranging from the works of veterans-some of them under recognized…-to some of the most promising young painters around, such as Kim Fisher….”