Anthony Lister | Woke up on fire

About

The opening reception will be held Wednesday, December 4 from 7p.m. to 10 p.m. The exhibit will be on view November 28 through December 8.

Woke Up on Fire,  an exhibition of 15 large scale paintings explore the artist’s ongoing interest and romance with the Myths and the cultural significance of Super Heroes.  In Lister’s newest body of work,  the artist captures the human connection, and our collective fascination with Heroes and Villains; good and evil, and the power they hold metaphorically.  Comprised of bold gestures, drips, smears, and comic book colors the painted subjects float on stark white backgrounds as if to be idealized like historical figures hanging in the halls of powerful institutions.   The canvases include a type of iconography, relating to each mythologized figure. The words and poetic language compositionally float on the  canvas,  giving the viewer a raw glimpse into the artist’s thinking, and creative process of working and reworking, mapping the painting,  shaping the identity and developing the narrative. These verbal markers are like that of a surgeon’s notations on human skin, or a mad scientist whose thoughts of an idea run unstoppable across a chalk board as a stream of thinking toward an ultimate place of clarity and resolve.

Lister’s paintings, are both developmental and academic, poetic, yet fundamentally in flux.  The larger than life body of work stands as a testament to the over all narrative that has greatly defined the artist’s identity, and his own mission as a solid force in the contemporary art world.

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For me….these paintings hold fifteenth-century folk-law warnings and mystic superstations of the ancient world. In the other, one finds ones self slapped with pop puzzle lashings. Visually wet, dripping and hyped-up on neon flavored cereal as Saturday morning cartoons scream out about a confused moral fortitude.  These paintings were made during the ad break. There is a sticker upon the television that reads; “This is a sometimes thing”.    -Anthony Lister

Robert Fontaine Gallery is located at 2750 NW 3rd Ave Unit 22; Open 11am - 5 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday and by appointment; 305-397-8530; gallery@robertfontainegallery.com.

High-resolution images, available upon request for use and publication.

ABOUT ANTHONY LISTER

Anthony Lister is a contemporary Australian-born painter,  best known for his merging of “high” and “low” cultural imagery in his work. He is looked to as one of the most skilled and highly revered  painters among his contemporaries. A gifted action painter both of narrative and still-life  his paintings capture most purely his generation and the imagery that has defined it. Without compromise Lister’s works have bridged the gab between  street and the formal gallery setting, usually reserved for an exclusive group of artists.

Born in 1979 in Brisbane, Australia, he studied at the Queensland College of Art. Lister helped pioneer the street art movement in his home city as a teenager and is considered Australia's premier street artist .His scrawling, figurative, and unmistakable style employs charcoal, acrylic, spray paint, and oil. “The first rule of painting is to take everyone else out of the equation,”  he has said. “I am the viewer, so I don’t underestimate my viewers. They see everything and I just have to assume that they are me. I can’t paint for anyone else.”

ABOUT ROBERT FONTAINE GALLERY

The Robert Fontaine Gallery, provides a platform for emerging, mid-career and established artists ranging in historical scope from the origins of Post War to the most current evolutions of digital