Öyvind Fahlström

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.