In Painters' Heads

Inside the Painter's Studio, an exhibition of Joe Fig's table sculptures at the Byron C. Cohen Gallery for Contemporary Art (2020 Baltimore, 816-421-5665), opens tonight from 7 to 9. After a prolonged hiatus, Fig explores his own artistic motivations by reproducing the work spaces and studios of contemporary painters in tiny, hyper-detailed tableaux. "For me, I was doing the historical painters to question why I was interested in painting again. I thought, if I could figure out their processes, maybe I'd become an abstract painter." The sculptures, meticulously assembled (down to the individual paint splatters on work surfaces), begin with interviews of the artists in their studios and include photographs and measurements of everything in the rooms. "I get 99 percent of the detail that I can," Fig says. "At first, I thought I could randomly splash paint around and simulate it, and I discovered I was wrong. The kinds of coffee cans they use, the kinds of coffee cups they use — like, if an artist lives in Chinatown, they'll have Chinese coffee cups laying around — those details are really important."
Thursdays-Saturdays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Starts: March 6. Continues through April 25, 2009