ARTISTS
SCOTT FIFE
SELECTED PRESS
Scott Fife at Bodybuilder & Sportsman Gallery, Beautiful Decay, 2006
The vitality of deceased cultural icons lays within the construction of their histories. Scott Fife illustrates this in his show Geronimo! at the Bodybuilder & Sportsman Gallery in Chicago. In his first solo exhibition at this gallery, Fife painstakingly expanded his already impressive body of work and presents it to the viewer very noninvasively. The larger-than-life statuesque sculptures of cardboard, screws, and glue elicit a confrontation as the tangibility of the busts are alive in the space. The precise detail that Fife exhibits on these gray busts makes the heads of these familiar figures have a powerful presence, thought the presence is eerie, like one would feel if they were examining the frozen remains of Pompei- alive but dead.
Upon entering the gallery, the viewer feels as if they were instantly transported into a statue maker's workshop; it is as if one were taking a behind-the-scenes tour. The busts seem unfinished and raw as they lay every which way on untreated wooden pedestals, seemingly waiting to be bronzed. His large ink-wash drawings on pink paper provide the gallery with a feeling of closure as the viewer is then reminded they are indeed in a gallery.
When viewing the work, the familiarity of the figures presented, Kurt Cobain, Lily St. Cyr, Che Guevara, and Geronimo, elicits what we know about them in post-modern fashion. It is just that which we are observing; we are seeing the built identities of those whom we do not know personally, but rather through different popular mediums. Fife incidentally gives us another medium in which to remember the fallen icons; however, he uses his medium to portray the icons with literal construction flaws just as we know and remember these figures primarily for their tragic lives and real flaws.
His piece Kurt Cobain, 2006, is displayed face-up attached to the wall at knee level as if lying in a grave. The immense detail Fife constructs from his eyes to his hair asserts a sense of physicality to the viewer. Upon further examination, the particular detail in the chaos of materials requires the viewer to pay close attention to and ultimately appreciate the technique of Fife's unique. The meticulous assembly of the work is exposed by the visible screws, overlapping cardboard, red and yellow pencil marks, and visible impressions of the sculpting process. The imperfections of the work are obviously deliberate, but the work maintains its precision. Pointedly, the personalities he renders were not at all perfect; they all had their own flaws or at least their histories do as we know them.
Reluctantly departing from his compelling, signature busts, his ink wash drawings on pink paper of figures such as Lily St. Cyr, Che Guevara, and Geronimo give the viewer another look at these icons. The soothing pink background consumes the faces of these icons as they alone float in the top half of the ostensibly oversized paper. The Mies van de Rohe drawing, unlike those of the other icons, does not have an accompanying bust, and Fife depicts him as one would see and know him in a photograph with the exception of a line of ink dripped down the paper as if coming out of his mouth. In the spirit of of Fife's body of work, his drawings embrace flaw as well. In the scope of history, tragedy and imperfection are ever present, if not a defining characteristic. Society tends to remember cultural icons for their flaws and hardships. Fife embraces this ideology and visually presents it through his own chosen art form gracefully and flawlessly in his own rite.
Jeremy Flahaven