DANCARCHY REFUGE

Art Basel Miami Beach (2015)

Naomi Fisher has created a puzzling shelter for the boho dancers of Art Basel Miami Beach, a continuation of her interest paintings as performance as set as bar as drinking as dancing as looking at painting. No need to solve the puzzle without all the pieces. Dancarchy Refuge is a place to hide, get a drink, move around, see pointe shoes pointing daily from 3-5pm, watch, sit, imbibe, reflect.

“The ebbs and flows of becoming and unbecoming human, we’ve all been there, shape-shifted through time from the Stone Age to the Digital Age, to the so-called Age of Loneliness, a pity for us, most social of creatures. We, anthropos, make marks and take refuge in our expression jete temp leve or set a petrol station on fire. Dancarchy Refuge.

Fear not the expression and motifs of Naomi Fisher. Large canvases of exquisite composition and color masterfully applied. Painted layers that build up a crazy purple/silver/pink iridescent haze of chunky pale turquoise grit. They’re so dark, at first, yet it’s actually the look of dense transparency. Refined gestures and unique symbols where everything is in motion—the energy of the Anarchist kid, the radical cheerleader, whose body stretched from limb to limb to perform the long brushstrokes, kneeled, bent, extended to reach the tops. Making figures, with elongated arms and legs, heads tossed back, arms up, dancing in celebration or perhaps it’s despair, both alive and dead. A skeleton lays buried in the netherworld, underneath the life-giving roots that come up to the surface, a past lover from a past life and a nod to Munch’s 1916 Metabolism series. Upside down tulips, eyes, eyes, eyes. Look closely, an anarchy sign forms between the circle and legs. Look into the haze, behind first impressions, a hieroglyph, a blob beneath a blob.

Elegant athletes wearing pointe shoes exerting energy in celebration, or maybe it’s despair, because we are both alive and dead. The physique, the genetic stuff, the figure turning human, no, returning human, sets a petrol station on fire against the Florida palm trees.”

-Agatha Wara