ERIC FISCHL

A programme of collaborations between the digital producer Vortic and a guest creator, Artists Projects reconsiders traditional modes of creation through technology. Each project is a unique collaboration – a standalone exploration and expansion of an individual’s practice. With access to state-of-the-art technology, from mixed reality to CGI and AI, participating artists are able to experiment in an alternate medium, creating new works entirely or re-envisioning existing motifs in a digital environment. Eric Fischl’s creative collaboration with Vortic began in 2022 and is the first time the artist has worked with virtual reality.

Bathers is Eric Fischl’s first exhibition at Victoria Miro Venice and brings together five large-scale, hand-painted bronze sculptures derived from virtual paintings: Woman with Green Hat; Lady with Red Hat; Three Women by Pool; Dancer; and Sudden Gust of Wind (all 2023–2024).

From the outset, Eric Fischl has been interested in the figure, the body, and the relationship of one body to another, all within the context of everyday life. To date, his focus remains on this representation through the investigation of new mediums and language. What began as virtual pictures created in the Google Tilt Brush app, featuring figurative motifs from Fischl’s celebrated beach scenes, have become bronze, wall-mounted sculptural paintings. Produced at Pangolin Editions in Gloucestershire, UK, and hand-painted by the artist, the resulting near life-size sculptures marry the vivid world of virtual reality painting with the enduring craftsmanship of bronze casting. Bridging the gap between the virtual and the physical, combining cutting-edge technologies and ancient techniques to produce works that previously would only have been viewable through digital platforms, this phenomenon parallels the creative process itself: an idea making its way from the intangible imagination through to a concrete reality.

‘Working backwards from the newest VR technology to the age-old process of bronze casting represents the journey these sculptures have taken. No question about it, we live in an age of technological wonder, and being able to bring together these two disparate technologies is irresistible to me as an artist. So much is bound up in those colourful brushstrokes trying to describe impressionistic scenes created by me in the non-existent space of virtual reality. The thrill for me comes from the absurd path these works have taken to become the sculptural reliefs that they are. It is certain that I would never have arrived at them in any other way.’

– Eric Fischl

Courtesy Victoria Miro