"Naomi Fisher: Clear Cut"
2005-04-15 until 2005-07-10
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
Kansas City, MO, USA

Miami-based Naomi Fisher creates psychologically and sexually charged images in which tropical landscape, decorative pattern, and fairytale figures collide in nightmarish scenarios. Fisher's high-fashion seductresses are menacing "often wielding knives" in her drawings and photographs, saturated with reds, oranges, yellows, and pinks. Featuring 11 works, the exhibition Naomi Fisher: Clear Cut is on view April 15 through July 10 at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.

Fisher's "ladies," as she calls them, are drawn from characters imagined or inspired by horror films, feminist literature, music, mythology, and art history. Her tough-girl images reflect a shift in the representation of women in today's culture, with Xena Warrior Princess, Gwen Stefani, Lara Croft, and other icons of "grrrl power" on center stage. Fisher's ladies sport high heels and modish dresses, but they do not relinquish their power. They are sexually enticing to men and symbols of strength for women.

In her menacing nature scenes, tropical foliage overwhelms, waters seem endless, and skies are ominous. Her subjects are literally consumed by nature. In the exhibition's accompanying brochure, Kemper Museum Curator Elizabeth Dunbar writes, "the female embodies nature in Fisher's drawings - she is Mother Nature incarnate."

Born in 1976 in Miami, Florida, Fisher received a B.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1998. She has had solo exhibitions at the Miami Art Museum (2001) and the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (2000).

The exhibition features seven drawings and four photographs and is accompanied by a free, four-color brochure with an essay by Elizabeth Dunbar, curator of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of Missouri

Other Important Exhibitions in United States