Öyvind Fahlström

Drawings and Paintings / The Complete Graphics and Multiples

February 22 – April 5, 2003

Öyvind Fahlström
Untitled, 1956
offset lithograph
9 1/4 x 6 1/4 inches

Öyvind Fahlström
Phase 3 of "Sitting...Five Panels", 1974
color silkscreen
27 3/8 x 39 3/8 inches

Öyvind Fahlström
Study for World Model (Garden), 1974
color silkscreen
27 1/4 x 39 1/8 inches

Öyvind Fahlström
Sketch for World Map Part 1 (Americas, Pacific), 1972
offset lithograph
34 x 40 inches
 

Öyvind Fahlström
Edlund, 1954
mimeograph
8 1/4 x 11 1/2 inches

Öyvind Fahlström
ESSO-LSD, 1967
manufactured plastic signs
35 1/16 x 50 x 5 7/8 inches (each of two panels)

 

Öyvind Fahlström
Sketch for World Map, 1973
one-color silkscreen
22 x 41 3/4 inches

 

Öyvind Fahlström
Dr. Livingstone Collage, 1974
color silkscreen
39 3/16 x 27 inches

Öyvind Fahlström
Column no.2 (picasso 90)1973
twenty-six color silkscreen
29 15/16 x 22 inches

Öyvind Fahlström
"Africa" Model, 1974
color silkscreen
39 1/4 x 27 1/2 inches

Öyvind Fahlström
Column no. 3 (Chile F), 1974
color silkscreen
39 3/16 x 27 3/8 inches
 

Öyvind Fahlström
Sketch for "Kidnapping Kissinger", 1974
color silkscreen
27 1/2 x 39 7/16 inches

Öyvind Fahlström
Sitting...Dominoes, 1966
color silkscreen on vinyl, magnets, metal , and Plexiglas
28 1/4 x 40 3/8 x 11/16 inches

Öyvind Fahlström
My Dear White Skeleton (illustration for a poem by Walasse Ting from "1 cent life"), 1964
color lithograph
16 1/4 x 22 7/8 inches

Öyvind Fahlström
Column no. 4 (Ib-affair), 1974
twenty-six color silkscreen
29 7/8 x 22 3/16 inches

Öyvind Fahlström
Rulle (Suggestions for "The Cold War"), 1974
color silkscreen
27 1/2 x 39 3/16 inches

 

Öyvind Fahlström
Section of World Map - A puzzle, 1973
five-color silkscreen on vinyl with magnets and metal
20 x 32 x 1/4 inches

Öyvind Fahlström
Column no. 1 (Wonder Bread)1972
four-color offset lithograph
27 15/16 x 23 3/16 inches

Öyvind Fahlström
Simplicity, 1974
color silkscreen
39 x 27 1/2 inches

Press Release

ŌYVIND FAHLSTRŌM
Drawings and Paintings / The Complete Graphics and Multiples

February 22 - April 5, 2003

Öyvind Fahlström (1928-1976) was an artist of immense influence whose pioneering works reflect a transition from Surrealism and Dada to Pop and various current art strategies. A peer of artists including Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Ray Johnson, James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg, Marcel Broodthaers, Peter Saul and Robert Crumb, his work has been the subject of several major museum retrospectives worldwide and is represented in numerous public collections.

Born in São Paolo to Scandinavian parents, Öyvind Fahlström spent his childhood in Brazil and Sweden, and moved to New York City in 1961. Although he lived for only 47 years, he created a vast oeuvre spanning the disciplines of poetry, film, performance, installation, sculpture, painting, and printmaking. In 1953 Fahlström wrote a founding manifesto on Concrete Poetry, which eventually led him to the visual arts and on to become one of the first painters to incorporate comic book iconography and integrate substantial text. Throughout the 1960's and 1970's, he made paintings referred to as "variables", as well as large installations with sculptural elements, that viewers could manipulate by moving elements into changeable configurations. 

Following his idealistic vision of making art that was more accessible, Fahlström dedicated himself to the populist practice of making multiples and graphic works. Cartographic and diagrammatic, these politically oriented works read like rebuses, merging dense information with obsessive cartoon-like imagery and formal pictorial invention. Employing systems and strategies found in maps, puzzles and games, Fahlström created his own visual language that critiqued globalism and promoted utopian ideas. He highlighted current events and investigated political, social and economic concerns in visually complex works of art.

Fahlström followed the traditions of the 20th century avant-garde and was also influenced by pre-Columbian manuscripts and modern Mexican art, John Cage and underground American comic books. Highly regarded during his lifetime, his work is now recognized as groundbreaking and prefiguring that of many artists today. His hybrid approach combining art and popular culture with a conceptual and sociopolitical agenda was and remains ahead of its time.

Feigen Contemporary is pleased to present The Complete Graphics and Multiples from the collection of Bank One, organized by the Bank One Art Program and Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago, and curated by Sharon-Avery Fahlström. This exhibition complements a show of rare Fahlström graphics and drawings presented by Feigen Contemporary in 1993.

Following his idealistic vision of making art that was more accessible, Fahlström dedicated himself to the populist practice of making multiples and graphic works. Cartographic and diagrammatic, these politically oriented works read like rebuses, merging dense information with obsessive cartoon-like imagery and formal pictorial invention. Employing systems and strategies found in maps, puzzles and games, Fahlström created his own visual language that critiqued globalism and promoted utopian ideas. He highlighted current events and investigated political, social and economic concerns in visually complex works of art.
​Fahlström followed the traditions of the 20th century avant-garde and was also influenced by pre-Columbian manuscripts and modern Mexican art, John Cage and underground American comic books. Highly regarded during his lifetime, his work is now recognized as groundbreaking and prefiguring that of many artists today. His hybrid approach combining art and popular culture with a conceptual and sociopolitical agenda was and remains ahead of its time.

Feigen Contemporary is pleased to present The Complete Graphics and Multiples from the collection of Bank One, organized by the Bank One Art Program and Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago, and curated by Sharon-Avery Fahlström. This exhibition complements a show of rare Fahlström graphics and drawings presented by Feigen Contemporary in 1993.