FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tommy Fitzpatrick: Curtain Wall March 3 – April 9, 2005

For his third New York solo exhibition, TOMMY FITZPATRICK’s new paintings continue to explore the language of architecture and its relationship to the painted surface. FITZPATRICK focuses on the façades of corporate structures, and he uses "the curtain wall ... [as] a mirror of glass and steel ... [that] reflects and distorts the world around it." His paintings merge aspects of illusionism and geometric abstraction into one image.

FITZPATRICK says, "I have always considered painting to be a type of building process. Architecture and its modular structure runs parallel to what I see as the act of painting. The curtain wall creates a relationship similar to painting. Both are mirrors each serve as skins to an underlining structure beneath."

"In Fitzpatrick's hands," Christopher French writes in his essay for Galveston Arts Center's catalogue, "the architectural style pioneered by Mies van der Rohe as one of the pivot points of modernism becomes both a window on the world and a funhouse mirror through which we can see the towering impersonality of our own present tense."

Born in Texas, FITZPATRICK received his M.F.A. from Yale University, New Haven, CT, in 1993. His work is in the collection
of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. His work is currently on view in a solo exhibition, Object Lessons, organized by the Galveston
Arts Center, and traveled to Texas A&M University, Commerce, and will be at the Arlington Museum of Art, Texas from July 9 - September 3, 2005. He currently lives and works in Arlington, TX.

The exhibition will be on view at the Charles Cowles Gallery at 537 West 24^th Street, between 10^th and 11^th Avenues in Chelsea. Hours are 10am to 6pm, Tuesday through Saturday. There will be a reception for the artist on Thursday, March 3, from 6-8 pm.

For further information or photographs, please contact the gallery.

Above image: Pennzoil 2, 2004-5, acrylic on canvas, 75 x 75 inches