VIP Opening Preview (by Invitation):
Wednesday, December 1, 10am–2pm

Open to the Public:
Wednesday, December 1, 2–8pm
Thursday, December 2, 11am–7pm
Friday, December 3, 11am–7pm
Saturday, December 4, 11am–7pm

OCHI Projects is pleased to participate in The New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA)’s 19th edition of NADA Miami, to take place December 1–4, 2021 at Ice Palace Studios with a two-person booth featuring paintings by Matthew F Fisher and sculptures by Sam Shoemaker.

Fisher’s paintings of the shore and Shoemaker’s ceramic and mushroom sculptures use conceptual juxtapositions of form to create surreal yet empathic artworks that articulate new visions of reality.

Matthew F Fisher uses the lexicons of landscape and still life painting to articulate an existential dilemma between figuration and abstraction. Fisher vacillates between natural and artificial, action and stillness, real and imaginary—acknowledging that any narrative begun on canvas is finished in the viewer's mind. As water meets land or sand or doesn’t, Fisher occasionally proffers a seashell, a sea stack, celestial bodies, grass, or waves—but nothing happens and that is the point. Is it possible to make a painting about nothing? Like a paradoxical riddle, Fisher’s paintings allude to the inadequacy of logical reasoning in relation to memory.

Sam Shoemaker's work stems from his interest in ecosystems, radical pedagogies, and responsive and relational objects as he facilitates ongoing collaborations with rare, native, and medicinal fungi. Drawn to objects that behave, react, change, grow, and carry rhythm, Shoemaker collects and propagates mushrooms, manipulating them in a highly controlled environment of his design. Pairing reishi mushrooms, known for their medicinal qualities and red-varnish coloring, with hand-built ceramic vessels, Shoemaker developed a unique substrate formula that allows the mushrooms to grow for several months, slowly emerging from within each vessel. Comparable to a long exposure in photography, Shoemaker carefully moves LED lights, adjusts the temperature, changes the saturation of CO2, or moves the reishi themselves closer or farther apart—in order to choreograph the forms. Archiving these reactions as they grow, Shoemaker captures mushroom good moods, tantrums, or other unanticipated expressions of fruiting body language. The results carry the poetics of an organic form responding to its manipulated environment, an expression of the artist as a steward of matter, and myriad ecological possibilities.

Matthew F Fisher (b. 1976, Boston, MA) lives and works in New York, NY. His recent solo exhibitions include East Hampton Hole Phase Three, The Hole, East Hampton, NY (2021), Seas, Ochi Projects, Los Angeles, CA (2021), The Great Fire, SHRINE, New York, NY (2020); After the Ice, Taymour Grahne Projects, London, UK (2019); Soft Nature, Ochi Projects, Los Angeles, CA (2019); Strange Light, Over Under Room, Brooklyn, NY (2018); Into the Blue, Johansson Projects, Oakland, CA (2018); and Observable Universe, Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York, NY (2017). Fisher’s work has been exhibited internationally at venues including The Hole, New York, NY; Spazio 22, Milan, Italy; Work Release, Norfolk, VA; and The Breeder, Athens, Greece. Fisher is the recipient of residencies and awards including a Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant (2016), Yaddo (2015, 2007), a New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship (2010), and the Millay Colony for the Arts (2005). He received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University (2000) and his BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design (1998).

Sam Shoemaker (b. 1991) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He received his BFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2014 and his MFA from Yale University (sculpture) in 2020. His recent exhibitions include Expanded Field at Ochi Projects, Los Angeles, CA, Walking at Café Quoi Sculpture Garden, Los Angeles, CA and Jupiter Finger organized by Shay Myerson at Real Pain, Los Angeles, CA. Shoemaker will have a solo exhibition with OCHI in 2022.