NORA GRIFFIN / LIQUID DAYS

June 3rd - July 2nd
FIERMAN WEST (19 PIKE STREET)

FIERMAN presents LIQUID DAYS, the third solo painting show by Nora Griffin, inaugurating our new gallery space at 19 Pike Street. The space is not fully renovated for this show, and the raw, provisional structure of the gallery harmonizes with the paintings’ kinetic roughness and wildly colorful atmospheres. LIQUID DAYS is comprised of four 6ft paintings, installed within hand-painted artist frames that reflect the shifting, psychedelic nature of life lived in New York City over the past two years. For several years Griffin has worked with methods of framing painting, and the incorporation of personal imagery within abstract space. LIQUID DAYS builds upon her two previous shows, Chartreuse (2018) at FIERMAN and Modern Love (2016) at Louis B. James. Griffin’s last project at FIERMAN was Red Telephone (2020) a painting show she curated with an accompanying artist zine made with David Fierman. Nora Griffin was born in 1982 in New York, NY, and currently lives and works in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

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I wanted to be thrown into that moment of perfume when everything was gone except for the dazzle. It doesn’t last long, but in order to have everything you must have those moments of such unrelated importance that time ripples away like a frame of water

-Eve Babitz, 1972

We are living in a material world, but images want to be in control. Projected through my mind are living- moments, experiences of light as color, as atavistic longing. And the liquid days that flow through me and the deep bedrock of Manhattan island. Measuring time as paint drops on a tantric model started in Springtime 2020, a sweetness that was also a death, the blooming city, the absence of people, the presence of solid rock, art deco skyscrapers, graffiti under the bridges, even the boarded-up storefronts were refreshing--a minimal covering, a canvas over everything. Translation takes time. It can take 2 years to get the energy to make a big painting, and 2 hours to lay the paint down. Paint is the liquid material that sets it in place. A camouflaged zebra set against a camouflaged urban jungle, like a Pop Art vision, but it’s also just a zebra, a random gift of nature, a pattern to read. The oil paint is fluid and layered, but also thickened in areas like a build-up of feeling, an excess that cannot be explained away. Scattered images in my studio: Manet’s “Fifer” flute player, an armless guitarist in Union Square, roll into a figure of Pan, ancient source of panic and pleasure. The process is a non-process. A postmodern Wabi-Sabi, letting the drips happen like an urban decay on the subway where the relics of past ads are seen through fresh blue paint, and maybe a rat passes by. Tiny votive sculptures made from molds and epoxy set the painting in place and frame it giddily. The sunglasses you buy on Canal Street will let you see the true city. Canal Street, the most liquid of streets with its rubber, plastic, faux leather, and glasses and iconic toys. I remember walking on 14th street with my great aunt in the late 1980s and seeing the little plastic frogs that floated in water. Canal Street is a portal. Like in Vieques, Puerto Rico, in the town of Isabel Segunda, red lights leads the way for sea turtles to find the water. A koi pond in a Topanga garden by the ocean, fat red fish in green- blue water, sunlight hitting water, the fish swimming in geometric symmetry. At another koi pond on Houston Street, Brandon said “They are coy.” Language is liquid. Fish are liquid light carriers, darting through her mind on a day with perfect weather, when she said: “I am in love with all living things.” Putting all my Egyptian hieroglyphic ducks in a row I leave you with the zzzz of a sleeping cat, a splash of violet light, and the Empire State Building bordering the edges of what is visible. Painted fossils from the future.

-Nora Griffin, May 2022

This show is dedicated to L. Brandon Krall (1955-2021) & Ron Gorchov (1930-2020) Special thanks to Naomi Treistman Vurnbrand