Emily Fleisher

Emily Fleisher plays with scale and space, with interior and exterior in very unexpected ways. Grass and trees tumble from familiar objects as the landscape appears to escape, protesting its confinement. By conjuring an endless landscape contained within the most mundane objects, Fleisher dismisses boundaries and suggests that even ordinary things withhold insight into the monumental; a universe resides within a soap dispenser or a tube of toothpaste providing moments of revelation.

Fleisher states: “My work has always played with the connections between the most mundane elements of daily life and the most elusive, or intangible aspects of life. I make use of the physicality of space and blend depictions of interiors with the exterior landscape, erasing imposed borders. My current environment, in suburban San Antonio, has further influenced these ideas. As I settled in here a few years ago, I became hypersensitive to the things that pop out as atypical in the rather bleak suburban landscape. These interruptions break my expectations of my environment and feel like mini moments of revelation. I feel that the most ordinary of things are withholding moments of insight into the monumental.

My mother used to give me pastina quite often as a child, and it’s turned into a symbol of comfort. I remember being a bit mesmerized by the box itself, which was filled with a seemingly infinite number of tiny pasta stars. I could dip my hand in and strain them through my fingers. It feels like all the stars in the universe could fit within that box of pasta – it’s also sort of a metaphor of the big bang. I like the idea of using something that I’ve known and held in my hands my whole life to depict the nearly inconceivable.”