Skarstedt is delighted to announce an exhibition of nine new paintings by Eric Fischl, which will be on view in the New York gallery from 14 March – 4 May 2024. The exhibition will mark the debut of his new series, titled Hotel Stories.
Hotel rooms take on an array of meanings, associations, and possibilities for each of their inhabitants. For some, they feel personal and cozy, like a safe haven. For others, they’re simply a space to put their things. They can be sites of nefarious, taboo activity; a blank slate on which to place romantic ideals; or even spaces of extreme isolation and sadness. A wide range of events take place in these rooms that are not what the they supposedly promise, and Fischl explores each one of these potential outcomes in this new body of work, a perfectly fresh continuation of the ideas that have haunted his paintings for so many years.
The experience of travel is latent with a, perhaps false, sense of promise and possibility, making it a prime activity on which to project one’s innermost fantasies—one can be someone else when in a different city. Similarly, there is a certain familiarity in the experience of a hotel room: one can more or less expect the same outdated patterned carpet, drab wall art, a couple of chairs, and a bed. At the same time, one remains keenly aware throughout their stay that they are transient, and that this space does not belong to them. Within this dichotomy of the familiar and unfamiliar lies further, tenser juxtapositions between interiority and exteriority, public and private, dislocation and comfort.
Each painting vibrates with an almost tragic stillness—a feeling that the artist likens to a muffled scream. In October 7: Heading Home, for example, a smartly dressed woman, poised to go explore wherever she is visiting, is instead frozen in place with her eyes glued to the television as it emanates that classic blue glow, projecting a real-time, real-world horror right as she attempts to remove herself from the realities of life through this vacation. Although we do not see what is unfolding, we understand its darkness through the stiffness of her body. The question of where emotions live in the body, particularly those more forbidden feelings of shame and violence, echoes across the works in the exhibition, such as in King’s Highway: Killing Time. A man sits on his bed, strumming his guitar. There is a looseness to his posture, an ease borne out of a level of self-assuredness and self-awareness. Yet, the simplicity of this serene moment is complicated by the AK-47 that rests by the window.
If we are invisible spectators to tragedy in October 7: Heading Home—an emblem of the interiority hotel rooms provide—then works such as Untitled reveal the hotel room’s complex position as a public space through a kind of erotic fantasy. A woman sits nude on her hotel room bed, a towel wrapped around her head, her body partially covered by a pillow while two spaniels sit by her side. Although her face is calm, her eyes stare directly out at the viewer (as do her dog’s), implicating us as the reason why she had to suddenly cover up. Throughout his career, Fischl has consistently asked what role the viewer plays in these moments. When that idea is expanded outward from one individual painting across a series or a body of work, then it becomes a question of what role we play in society writ large.
Dislocation is similarly present throughout these paintings, an effect Fischl partly achieves by bending the realities of time. In some, the juxtaposition of two figures who do not cohesively interact prompts the viewer to consider if they are, in fact, observing the same room across different nights and different guests. In Snapshot of a Marriage, one person is seen holding a shopping bag, dressed and ready to go, pointing towards the door; the other, fresh out of the shower, is about to put her hair in a towel. Is he ushering her to get ready so they can head back out, or do they even see each other at all? These kinds of questions reveal that we are simultaneously always alone and never alone—a pervasive sentiment that can be found in even the most quotidian of moments.
