Vernon Fisher in a still image from Breaking the Code (2024)
September 18, 2024, 6:00-7:30 pm ET
Born to rural Texas farmers in 1943, Vernon Fisher’s childhood exposure to painting was only as “something you did to houses.” By the 1980’s, he was exhibiting alongside Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, establishing himself as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. Throughout his career, Fisher was also an influential art professor at the University of North Texas.
Artist Jeff Elrod is a former student and describes his time with Fisher as “life changing.” Another former student, Baseera Khan, recently won the 2023 MTV reality show, “The Exhibit: Finding the Next Great Artist”. Both artists are featured in Breaking the Code.
Film poster for Breaking the Code (2024)
The film also features MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, Dave Hickey, and the acclaimed art historian, Frances Colpitt, in two of the final interviews recorded before their respective deaths in 2021 and 2022.
Winner of “Best Historical Film” at the 2023 Dallas International Film Festival, Breaking the Code introduces Vernon Fisher to a new generation while also giving the many who already know his work an intimate look at his life and art. A virtual discussion and Q&A will follow this Franklin Furnace LOFT Screening of the film. The discussion will feature former Under Secretary for Art at the Smithsonian Institution Ned Rifkin, Glasstire Publisher Brandon Zech, filmmaker Michael Flanagan and Franklin Furnace’s Ken Dewey Director Harley Spiller. Breaking the Code will be available to stream online via Glasstire TV following the Franklin Furnace LOFT Screening.
Vernon Fisher in front of Breaking the Code installation, 1981
Participating Artists
Vernon Fisher (1943-2023) has had major exhibitions of his artwork shown at museums including the Smithsonian Institution, Guggenheim Museum and Museum of Modern Art in New York, among many others. Fisher used a wide range of media to create large-scale paintings and installations that appropriate referents from vernacular architecture and pop culture and imply complex visual narratives. He is known for his blackboard paintings, which employ a slate-gray ground reminiscent of a chalkboard’s layered patina. The associations of erased texts and banal classroom moments complement the representational fragments, symbols, and texts that occupy the foreground of these works.
Ned Rifkin is the former Under Secretary for Art at the Smithsonian Institution. Rifkin served as director of the Menil Collection and Foundation in Houston (2000-2001). Under his leadership, exhibitions included “Agnes Martin: The Nineties and Beyond” in 2001. He also served as the Nancy and Holcombe T. Green Jr. Director of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta from 1991 to 1999, where he oversaw such nationally visible projects as “Five Rings: Passions in World Art,” a broad-reaching thematic exhibition for the 1996 Olympics, and “Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People.”
Brandon Zech is the Publisher of the Texas-based art publication Glasstire. In 2018 he began overseeing the publication’s news content as Glasstire’s first dedicated News Editor, and he replaced the site’s founding Publisher, Rainey Knudson, in 2019. In addition to speaking at venues across Texas, Brandon also contributes podcasts and articles to the site. He is a graduate of the University of Houston.
Michael Flanagan is a filmmaker from McAllen, TX. Michael works as a video journalist covering border issues in the Rio Grande Valley for Viory, writes on Texas visual art for Glasstire, and has taught courses in Media Arts at the University of North Texas. His films have been screened internationally at spaces including the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Cadogan Contemporary in London, VUB Gallery in Brussels, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Breaking the Code is presented by Franklin Furnace and Glasstire.
This Event is supported by The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; The New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
