November 7, 2025 – June 14, 2026 -Located in Steele Gallery
So she can’t find stuff in her new house, Casa Nuevo, painting from 1982, oil on linen. The woman is naked. She’s talking on the phone, it’s a wall phone that one can remember from 1982, several boxes on the floor, the TV is on.
Fischl is a very representational painter: the paintings have narrative titles like Casa Nuevo, and the whole exhibition is called Stories Told. What is really being told here?
That photographs have been taken – details recalled, the painting made from a 2-d representation, not life. And purposely composed: a distortion of shape. Ovens, or maybe a fridge e open into the scene from the left – the shape is a diagonal. The stove is on a diagonal, too – both lines point to the young, naked woman who is on the telephone.
Probably can’t find a towel. She’s probably not looking for a fork.
There’s a boy with oranges that he uses to knock over his toy cowboys and Indians. He’s by a pool and everything else is vague. He’s like a giant. The toys are quite animated.
In another exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum that we’d just come from, some of the Japanese ceramicists mentioned a word that means ‘very large intense emotions’ and that in their forms, their ceramic sculptures, they hoped to express that. I thought about what an image means (emotionally) in words, especially what seems like a vase.
Here we were with these ‘stories’ in painting and I’m trying to see more than just the obvious ‘vase’.
The next images was one theme on three difference canvas. Marriage is the bringing together of things, three different canvases. She’s not happy about the ceremony that’s just happened. Glove is off. The dog is on a leash. One life is earlier, and the next may be future, and maybe she’s wondering if she likes the new lie.
The one with purple & black dress is called October 7: Heading Out and seems to a hotel room where she’s watching the news. What do you think she was doing before she found out Hamas had attacked Israel?, asks the curator notes on the wall beside this one.
The curation tag says: Once Where We Looked to Put Down Our Dead. From Rome 1996-98.
The scenes painted around these figures is very ornate, historical, in contrast to the central figures. The title is open, in contrast also, to the earlier paintings, which seem to be autobiographical.
A moment of self reflection, contrast with earlier paintings of youthful single figures: loss of innocence, transition, love of finery. I’m trying to find that Japanese idea. Saying that the picture is what the title says is maybe not enough.
The later paintings at the beach are made of beautiful colors, contrast great. There are painterly qualities that make it not photo realism. They feel emotionally painted.
Watercolors are not totally refined, and if you didn’t have the figure in there you could hang it in your modern house and still rent it out as an AirBnB.
New piece from 2025: The bed, the chair dancing and watching.
This part of the exhibition showed the original photograph taken, and the resulting painting made in 1982.
I think it is called “Old Man’s Boat and the Old Man’s Dog. I’m having trouble saying more. If I want to be cynical, I can say these paintings are important because they express strong emotions – the Japanese idea. But I want them to be more than a blown up photograph with a narrative title – that would do as much to express them. Why is the painting more?
By what it leaves out. Or so says, this display.