Into the wild with Naomi Fisher
Some of the most memorable images from the video “Myakka,” currently unspooling at the Fredric Snitzer Gallery, are of the incredible Florida light bouncing off — and dancing around — the wide variety of foliage in the state park where it was filmed. It also illuminates the faces and limbs of the women in front of the camera. The single-channel video is the focus of the latest exhibit from Naomi Fisher, though not the only highlight, as the paintings holding up the other end of the gallery are of equal weight.
Through both the lens and watercolor paint, we are peering through a veil at a dream-like, surreal world, at modern-day nymphs semi-obscured by vines, leaves, paint and diffused light.
“Myakka” is named after the state park in Florida where it was filmed over the course of 13 days, thanks to a Knight Arts Challenge grant. The video at first dominates, as the gallery is darkened entirely because of it. Fisher focused the camera on four women, who made a home in the wonderfully wild and scenic park that includes a river, wetlands, tropical forest and prairie. They made huts from palm leaves and created rituals and narratives for a life that might be outside of modern confines. The women hunt with makeshift weapons, paint faces, make fire and suggest hierarchal changes. Layered on top is a soundtrack punctuated with muted shrieks and fuzzy simulations of a crackling, crunching forest (courtesy of the group SKINT).
In the dimmed light in the back end of the gallery, “diffused” images of women, maybe with painted faces as well, or maybe seen through a thicket, emerge on canvas. They are romantic images, and ones that can appear, thematically, to be video stills. Fisher is known for her photography, but, here, her initial training in, and love of, painting takes center stage. These are lovely, fluid works — given extra contemplative space because of the quiet light involved in this particular arrangement.
“Myakka” by Naomi Fisher at the Fredric Snitzer Gallery, 2247 N.W. First Place, Miami; 305-448-8976; www.snitzer.com.
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