Carl Fudge

Works Biography 

Carl Fudge                                                                 Camouflage 2                                                          29 January - 23 February, 2008

For his third solo exhibition at Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard, Carl Fudge is exhibiting paintings and works on paper from 29 January to 23 February 2008.

Carl Fudge increases the complexity of the visual interpretation of an object by reducing the elements of a figurative subject. He updates the relationship between the abstract and the figurative in the present context of the digital world and of new developments in physical sciences. He has developed a creative process that combines information technology (digital deconstruction) silkscreen printing and full-tone painting with multiple masks.

The large format abstract paintings are originally based on Japanese erotic prints. Carl Fudge adds his own subtle touch of humor by making the scenes much less explicit.  
 
Carl Fudge presents a series inspired by Andy Warhol’s Camouflage Paintings series. In his latest paintings he magnifies part of the digital work, increasing the distance from the subject to such an extent that it becomes unrecognizable. In his recent works Fudge covers up, or camouflages, Warhol’s camouflage paintings, so that all that is left are enigmatic traces of combat fatigues. Conversely, one may also think that the artist reveals what was covered up in Andy Warhol’s pictures. Ever since it was first discovered that matter is essentially a modular system that may theoretically be reconfigured in any way we wish, using appropriate tools such as nanotechnology, Carl Fudge has felt free to explode matter and recompose it, creating new sci-fi hieroglyphs and a new digital abstract formalism.  

Until now Carl Fudge was best known for painting in perfect, precise and clean tones. Now he has added matter and his own physical presence to his painting. Leaving the canvas blank, he adds more matter to his painting. He leaves traces of brush strokes that evoke his own gesture and body. He even leaves faults and blemishes. Some paintings appear to have become mere traces of themselves, as though time had done its work. Unostentatiously the artist has come to express himself more through the medium of paint. Today he shows us a patchwork of works in different styles that explain his non-confrontational relationships between painting and digital invention, between the real and the virtual, between painting and image.

Carl Fudge’s work sets out to reflect his experiences of contemporary life with its different strata and all its complexity.  

Carl Fudge, who was born in London in 1962, lives and works in New York. Exhibitions which have featured his works include Surface Tension at the Chelsea Art Museum in 2004, Post-Digital Painting at the Cranbrook Art Museum in 2003, and BitStreams at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2002.