Trustman Art Gallery

Retina Riot

A Two-Person Exhibition by Andrew Fish and Nancy Hayes

September 4 - October 2

Opening Reception:
Thursday, September 11, 5-7 p.m.


Simmons University presents Retina Riot, an exhibit of paintings by Andrew Fish and Nancy Hayes from September 4 – October 2 at the Trustman Art Gallery, located on the fourth floor, Main College Building, 300 the Fenway in Boston. A reception from 5-7 p.m. will be held on Thursday, September 11. The exhibit and reception are free and open to the public.

Andrew Fish and Nancy Hayes are gifted colorists. Their paintings are saturated with an intense interplay between complementary colors and values while displaying consummate understanding of placement so that our retinal cone cells (the color receivers) are working overtime. But they do more – color’s siren call beckons us to enter their worlds intrigued by their push-pull compositions and manipulation of spatial relationships. Both artists evoke multi-layered responses with their imagery.

Andrew Fish works with oils in a masterfully brusque style. His forms undulate in specificity, popping out or seeping into their surrounding fields. His figures are contingently with us. They seem engaged in ordinary tasks but their very existence seems fragile. His roaring red work: Meeting the Shadow 05 casts doubt on the corporeality of his protagonist as he almost dissolves in the strong backlighting from the window behind him. We “almost see” him – in a converging composition that suggests forced perspective.

Nancy Hayes is devoted to perpetuating a shape repetitiously yet exploring scale and placement, building her compositions so that we are continually discovering new relationships. Her works evoke cellular or botanical motifs, while others seem to sprout machine generated versions of her patterns that call to mind our increasingly fretful understanding of what is alive or how we comprehend the world. Her work Pores and Orbs 5, is an uneasy truce between the two.

Fish and Hayes are painters challenging us visually through their thorough understanding of

color and form. Their works make us question and consider our world and how we are part of it.

Trustman Art Gallery hours are 10 AM – 4:30 PM, Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, 10 AM – 7 PM on Wednesday and Thursday. The gallery is free, open to the public and wheelchair accessible. For more information, contact Kyle Mendelsohn at (617) 521-2268 or find us on Instagram.