Art + Design Night in the Miami Design District

How Could You? The Bas Fisher Invitational. May 12th, 2007 Bas Fisher Invitational, located in the Miami Design District, will be hosting the closing reception of the exhibition How Could You? which presented for the last month a new body of paintings by New York-based artist Francine Spiegel. As a Miami native, Francine’s previous thematic obsessions with the leftover residues and refuse of party cultures have manifested recently as an intrigue for bodily fluids and trash in relation to female physical action. In her current paintings, Spiegel considers how repulsion acts as an attractive force in female seduction, and how the monstrous challenges definitions of sexuality. In these four “sexy-gory” portraits, all painted in acrylic, blobs and smears of goop appear in myriad hues, conjuring intestines, bubble gum, blood, antifreeze, pus, balloon shards, creamed corn, paint, cake, excrement, and more. This rainbow of liquid and gel substances interact with woman compositionally alone or grouped, to highlight their voluptuous figures, for example in “Terror Tales,” or to serve as backdrops that are simultaneously pretty and nauseating. The psychedelic visual effect induced by these “messy” works mimics the physical revulsion one might feel if these disgusting ingredients were literally applied to the canvases, illuminating the beauty of abjection once removed from its immediate sensorial triggers. For more information, please visit: www.basfisherinvitational.com