A Buddhist monk goes to order a hot dog and the vendor asks how he would like it prepared. The monk replies: “make me one with everything.” 

So the hot dog vendor prepares the hot dog and gives it to the monk. The monk pays him and asks for the change. The hot dog vendor says: “change comes from within.” 

Longhouse Projects is pleased to present a solo exhibition of recent work by artist Joe Fyfe. Fyfe’s cohesive, yet expansive output, originated in an early training in the fundamentals. In his own words, “I started as a painter of old, using oils, rabbit-skin-glued linen supports, bristle brushes of many varieties and I painted from life! Then from photographs, then with acrylic and gradually developed a diversity of means. I came to abstraction from a desire to work more directly with ideas and with the language of painting as I had begun to understand it. I often remind myself that my desire is to serve the materials, to attempt to keep the presence of the artist in check.”

Included in this show are paintings composed of felt, cotton, plastic banners, national flags, a broken umbrella, kites and much more. Materials he often finds in markets in South and Southeast Asia. There are wall and floor sculptures assembled from things found on the street – what Fyfe calls the ‘Modernist Pantheon.’ For example, a car bumper, bound sticks of wood, a tourniquet, bricks, etc. The framed collages on view combine painting on canvas, cardboard and paper, found objects and photographs Fyfe takes himself. The magnetism in Fyfe’s work lies in the undulation between haut-formalism and his quotidian palette. He establishes a lyricism in every work as a result of something like a secret recipe, ingredients including material plenitude, contemplative and decisive precision, and under-manipulated chance.