In the newly opened gallery L’Atelier’s second exhibition, the work of visual artist Jade Fusco is presented for the first time to the public. During the past several months of living in Berlin, Fusco has been tirelessly working to create a body of work for her first solo presentation that is both thematically cohesive while simultaneously showcasing her diverse skills and artistic projects in a variety of mediums. By working as both the artist and primary curator, Fusco was able to avoid simply exhibiting her work, instead constructing an enveloping experience with a strong narrative presence.
The exhibition, designed to create a dream-like space filled with images of anthropomorphic monsters undulating in negative and positive space, looks to explore imagery from the subconscious in a multitude of colors and forms that have the capability to unlock a plethora of emotions. In this particular body of work, as well has her other projects, Fusco draws on what she calls DMZL (pronounced damsel), an alter-ego of sorts that exists in a dream world different yet related to our own, functioning as a major source of creativity and imagination.
I Just Fell Asleep, is largely concerned with transporting the viewer to this other world of DMZL, by mapping the process of dreaming, following it from its initial point of drowsiness, to a deep, black sleep. This is largely accomplished in the way the works move from light delicate works in the entrance of the gallery, to all-encompassing, dark and haunting works in the basement, which seem to embody the deepest moments of dreaming. In addition to the arrangement of the work, the choice of low, ethereal blue-tinted lighting also works to transport the viewer beyond the gallery walls, into Fusco’s dream world.
From one work to another, reality is heavily manipulated, presenting an often confusing array of familiar figures and anatomy with outlandish compositions that disfigure forms to an unrecognizable point, reminiscent of the way dreams simultaneously reflect and distort reality. The journey through Fusco’s world of DMZL is overtly intimate, as if by putting these imagined subjects on paper, she is letting us into snippets of her subconscious as they surface in this imagined alternative world. In her works, Fusco also looks to explore all elements of sleeping and the bedroom, by exploring themes of dreaming and the subconscious while also recognizing the bedroom and sleeping as having a natural relationship to sex, desire, and fantasy. These latter themes are most present in what Fusco refers to as her “Sex Portraits”: paintings done in hues of pink, depicting hyperbolic scenes of fornication between and amongst her imagined monsters.
As both curator and artist, Fusco’s I Just Fell Asleep is an extremely powerful and enthralling first statement by an artist who, at the young age of twenty-one, is only beginning the process of articulating her practice. Perhaps what is so enticing about this show, is Fusco’s ability to imagine beyond individual works, instead mentally then physically constructing a transportive environment for the viewer. In the months and years to come, it will be well worth the time to follow Fusco’s project, as she imagines and creates worlds embedded in, yet also entirely beyond, the world we know.
~ Collin Munn, a writer living in Berlin.
(Images: Jade Fusco, Untitled, 2011; Courtesy of the artist and L’Atelier Kunst(spiel)raum; Transition from one dream state to the next; Untitled, 2011; Courtesy Collin Munn)