The three paintings in this exhibition break new ground materially and conceptually. Each is painted on both sides of a surface that is transparent. A crucial consequence is that what looks like one painting is actually two, each with its own title.

The titles are of the highest importance.They are scripts for making the paintings and guides for understanding them. All follow the same format, for example Three Gray Paintings (yellow/violet within red/green within blue/orange). The title tells us that,

as in Fisher’s earlier work, the painting is organized as three pairs of complementary colors, each of which, despite appearances, makes a gray painting, all of which are identical. And the title tells us that the two colors that make each of these three paintings are on opposite sides of the surface and, further, that they nest one within the other.

Each painting—more correctly, each object—is two paintings because the order of the colors when seen from one side is reversed when seen from the other. As the order of the colors is reversed in the paintings, so is the order of the colors in the pairs of colors in the titles.

All of the paintings are the same size. All consist of the same three pairs of colors, each pair making the same gray painting, so the six paintings are, despite their manifest differences, identical.

At any one time the viewer can see only one side, or one painting, a view of the work that is incomplete. To see both paintings, the object must be turned over, an act that divides the viewing of the work into two moments.

Fisher put the paint on the panels, which were positioned vertically, by using a palette knife like a slingshot. To the extent that this method allowed, he followed the model of the allover, but he was able to control only roughly where the paint landed, so the exact locations and shapes of the areas of paint were a matter of chance.

Morgan Fisher (b. 1942) lives and works in Los Angeles. This is his seventh exhibition with Bortolami.

Since the late ‘90s Morgan Fisher has worked mainly in painting, including painting installation. His work has been exhibited at, among other places, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Portikus, Museum Abteiberg, Raven Row, and the Generali Foundation. He showed a sculpture in the 2014 Whitney Biennial of American Art. He has also shown photographs and drawings. In addition to Bortolami, Fisher is represented by Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/Berlin/New York, and Maureen Paley, London. His most recent exhibition was at Galerie Mitterrand in Paris. Fisher attended Harvard College (1960–1964), receiving a B.A. in art history, then moved to Los Angeles to attend film school. He made films for many decades before extending his work to other media, and he continues to make films. His films have been shown at the major festivals in the US and abroad. He has been in three Whitney Biennials. He lives and works in Los Angeles.