From muse to museological, the life of an artistic object suggests passage towards resolution, clarity, and later category, thereby demystifying the creative impulse. Michael Byron and Stacy Fisher’s objects of contemplation complicate this notion, resist easy definition, and draw power from being nearly nameable. Fisher layers paint to mask forms sculpted out of hydrocal, rendering what once might have been identifiable objects into associative ones. By placing objects that recall tools or utensils on provisionally made pedestals, platforms, and columns, her sculptures become rudimentary monuments to the abstracted everyday. Byron’s practice is manifold, allowing for both representation and abstraction in painting. Selected on the basis of the power of the subject matter, his Grisaille series renders black and white photographs of modernist sculptures and anthropological icons seemingly from the archives and inventories of a museum. Byron employs a geometric framing device in each composition that isolates intense passages of pigment, while also representing means of display. Both artists use withholding and distancing strategies through simulated and actual layers, creating theatrical tableaus for historically and psychologically charged replicas, reprints, and artifacts.

Michael Byron has exhibited extensively, both nationally and internationally, with solo shows at the Aldrich Museum of Art, St. Louis Art Museum, The Suburban, Galerie Delta Rotterdam, and White Columns. He is the recipient of an NEA grant, as well as the Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Fellowship in Painting. Byron lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri, where he is faculty at Washington University.

Stacy Fisher has exhibited at Jeff Bailey Gallery, Thierry Goldberg Projects, Horton Gallery, Allegra La Viola and Daily Operation, in New York, as well as Nudashank in Baltimore, and Weekend in Los Angeles. In 2011 she had a two-person show with Gary Panter at Cleopatra’s in Brooklyn. She has received fellowships from the Edward F. Albee Foundation and The Vermont Studio Center. Fisher lives and works in Brooklyn.

The Study: Michael Byron and Stacy Fisher will open on October 20th, from 7-10pm. It will run from October 20th through December 2nd.