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Fish haven't played a great part in the history of western art. Birds and animals have often been represented, but it's rare to see depictions of their piscine brethren. 'It's probably because it's difficult to make them stand still long enough,' says an art critic friend. Still, with today's technology, artists seem to have overcome this fiddly problem. Not one but three artists are exhibiting fish-oriented works in New York.
The most fascinating is an installation by Tahitian artist Alexander Lee. His explosive, glutinous work takes up three rooms at the Clementine Gallery in Chelsea. Lee's show looks like a post-modern take on one of those futuristic Roger Dean progressive rock LP sleeves of the 1970s. The artist has transformed the small gallery into a strange island world by building a grungy landscape from compressed foam. He's then flooded it with crystalline fish (left) cast from resin and covered the whole space in glittery black Tahitian sand. The surreal result would make even the most jaded hippy's eyes drop out of his head.
The show, The Departure of the Fish, relates a Tahitian creation myth, which tells of a volcanic island that changed into a fish and swam to the mythological place of Ha'vai. There, it turned back into land, forming the Tahitian islands. Lee is aware that the pristine sludge, twisted creatures and disembodied human arms look like the aftermath of a tsunami. The primary aim of his work is mythical, but he says it's also a 'revisitation of communal catastrophe and trauma as spectacle'.
In Chinatown, at the Art in General gallery, Piotr Lutynski's Second Life has a different take on fish. He uses live minnows in a small fish tank as part of an installation that also has a giant deer's head. The fish swim around in a tank marked Like Stem Cells.
Lutynski says he's fond of using dead animals and fish in his work. It's his way of trying to 'tame the people. There's no art so high that it can't belong in a hen house'. Or an aquarium, apparently.
The final fish show was part of the Highline Festival, a multimedia event curated by that perennially fishy character David Bowie. Laurie McLeod's Waterhaven #3 is part of a series that projects underwater films in public spaces. This one was shown on a disused water tower on the corner of 14th Street and Washington.
Unfortunately for fish art fans, it was too high up and too blurry to see any of the creatures clearly.
