Edie Fake: 12th House

OPENING THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, 6-8PM

Broadway is pleased to present 12th House, a solo show of new paintings and a site-specific mural by California artist Edie Fake.

Fake's vantage point on climate catastrophe comes from living in the Mojave Desert, an environment imminently threatened by extractive exhaustion and biological collapse. Here, the artist takes as his subject the harsh and absurd realities of a rapidly shifting place as well as the possibility of adapting to severely stacked odds.

As such, these meticulously rendered gouache-on-panel paintings distill investigations into architecture, alchemy, water scarcity, and ecological grief. Alchemical vessels appear as provocateurs of unexpected transformative change. Stylized cloches and beakers enclosing budding plant life stand as cloistered microcosms of survival; a rammed-earth structure, suggesting the collectivity of a beehive, offers an alternative to traditional construction; and an almost diagrammatic expression of the material degradation of compost are all subjects of these graphic, content-rich paintings.

Throughout this body of work there is water-either flowing or evaporating into cracked mud patterns, liquids fermenting and atomizing, drying up forever. Acting as a connective tissue between the individual panels, water becomes a metaphor for loss and grave consequence, but also one of salvation.

There is a layer of mysticism here as well. In astrology, the 12th House is a site of hidden realms, destabilization, isolation, self-undoing and dreams. As the globe careens towards escalating calamities, Fake's paintings use the alignments of this house to reckon with a world in turmoil.  In a formal sense, the intoxicating patterning of the paintings both counters the chaotic and weaves its own mesmerizing spell.

Edie Fake (b. 1980) lives and works in Twentynine Palms, CA. Recent exhibitions include Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now at the MCA Chicago, mural/installation projects at the Berkeley Art Museum and Film Archives, CA and The Drawing Center, NY, and a solo exhibition at The Everson Museum of Art Syracuse, NY.