Spencer Fidler creates his large scale intaglio prints using multiple plates and, in the case of Day Voyage, multiple panels or sheets of paper. In these four prints, produced at by the artist in his studio, Fidler shrouds his figures as silhouettes, creating an eerie, mysterious, or shadowy presence. Stiff, almost frozen profiles, inhibit movement and animation.  Yet, the patterns of values insinuate a sequential position for each figure, stopped action, like cumulative visual effects of a strobe.

Fidler’s works are tableau, stage-like scenes of silent actors or dancers. In Madness, for example, a chaotic, perhaps violent, scene suggests a ritual fever among humans while canines survey near the center of the mêlée. In Cultivation and Domestication trees center attention on harvesting and husbandry. Figures in Cultivation interact with a tree, harvesting unknown foods from its boughs with sticks. Each figure bears a label–worker, viewer, observer/learner, planter/harvester, suggesting indeterminate roles in ancient, primal rituals.

~Michael Glenn