DW Fitzpatrick

Gordon Robichaux is pleased to present Daphne, DW Fitzpatrick’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. The presentation features a group of new sculptures made with found and altered objects, as well as a collage, a drawing, photographs, and a collection of Fitzpatrick’s artist’s books.

In the center of the gallery, Fitzpatrick has installed a pedestal fashioned from a slab of painted wood boards situated atop a Steelcase table. Here, the artist has composed a tableau of small, screwball assemblage sculptures using found objects, among them gnawed pencils, a dangling muselet, a miniature dollar bill, a limp nail, a reed, a magnet, a plastic cast of a thumb, and a white ceramic ball marked with the letter “I.”

On the walls of the room, a group of two and three-dimensional artworks further develop Fitzpatrick’s mise-en-scène. A jury-rigged object made with a wire armature and a plaster rope appears to spring off the wall, suggesting a distorted clock with no hands. A framed photograph of disembodied cowboys is, in fact, an image of two costumes from the film Brokeback Mountain, which the artist appropriated from The New York Public Library Picture Collection. Hanging nearby, a wood plank stands in for a face: its eyes and nose, bits of trash, and its mouth, a meticulously painted bronze cast of used chewing gum. In the corner of the room, tucked behind the door, a small cardboard diorama depicts an uninhabited prehistoric landscape.

For the duration of the exhibition, the gallery’s bookshelves will display a selection of Fitzpatrick’s artist’s books, which can be viewed and handled by visitors.

DW Fitzpatrick (b. 1964, Long Island, New York) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Fitzpatrick has presented solo exhibitions at Beware of Dog, Long Island City, NY (2023); Gordon Robichaux, New York (2018); Artist Curated Projects (ACP), Los Angeles (2017); Lighthouse Works, Fishers Island, NY (2015); Art in General, New York (2014); Know More Games, Brooklyn, NY (2013); Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan (2012); Museum 52, New York (2010); La MaMa Galleria, New York (2008); and Bellwether Gallery, New York (2007).

Their work has been included in group exhibitions at MACRO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma, Rome; Demisch Danant, New York (Curated by Robert Gober); Higher Pictures, New York; Artist Curated Projects (ACP), Los Angeles; Morán Morán, Los Angeles; Participant Inc., New York; Know More Games, New York; Public Fiction, Los Angeles; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PN; Trial Balloon, New York; Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan; M+B, Los Angeles; American Contemporary, New York; Art In General, New York; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE); Saatchi Gallery, London; Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Sandroni Rey Gallery, Los Angeles; Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco; Cohan and Leslie, New York; Brent Sikkema, New York; Baltimore Contemporary Art Museum; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven.

Fitzpatrick’s work has been reviewed in Artforum, The New York Times, and The New Yorker and is featured in Vitamin 3-D: New Perspectives in Sculpture and Installation (Phaidon Press). They were a faculty member in sculpture at the Yale School of Art from 2001 to 2011, and taught at The Cooper Union, ICP/Bard, and Bard College from 2015 to 2025.

Fitzpatrick has contributed work to the publications Artforum, North Drive Press, and Interview Magazine. They have been an artist-in-residence at BOFFO and FIAR in Fire Island, New York, and at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, and have received grants from Art Matters and the Jerome Foundation.