THE DISCREET CHARM OF ELISE FERGUSON

Elise Ferguson, “Charms”, 2025, ink and pencil on Irish linen, 84 x 130 x 30 inches
 

By EDWARD WAISNIS June 16, 2025

Situating Elise Ferguson’s work amid contemporary painting, given it’s synthesis of process marrying pigmented plaster with silk serigraph, adding the artist’s own begrudging acceptance of claiming the category, points to the fluidity that has been granted to the designation for some time. This opening up was championed by pioneers Christopher Wool, Richard Prince. and more recently Rudolf Stingel, Wade Guyton and Katharina Grosse.

Utilization of low-to-middle technologies, from paint rollers relied on by decorators to industrial-scaled inkjet printers, and spray guns has been crucial to this expansion. In Ferguson’s case silkscreen, a device invented for printing on fabric (subsequently elevated, chiefly by Andy Warhol, to high art implement) is the device that propelled her breakthrough (hinted at in the self-recognitition of the show’s title).

Ferguson’s go-to subject matter, jarring vibrations straight out of Op Art, or design pattern books, are emblazoned on homogeneous grounds resulting in stone-like tablets evoking slate shingles, pavers, or even grave markers of a certain vintage, that speak to an architectonic bent. Not surprising when one learns that the artist’s step-father was an architect.

With a wealth of wide-ranging experience to her credit–from assisting her mother’s custom fabric work (shop), university art education, and a plethora of fabrication work–Ferguson’s gravitation to work incumbent upon physicality makes sense.

Furthermore, as a product of a graduate education * that was caught up in the simulacrum/deconstruction mind warp, foisted as commandments to be abided by, during her tenure has imbued Ferguson with a means of absorbing the doctrinaire by turning up the temperature on the visual component of her practice.

Polly Collins, “An Emblem of the Heavenly Sphere”, 1854, Courtesy of the American Museum of Folk Art

 

Ferguson’s fascination with the Shakers (contributable to her upbringing surrounded by textile design?) becomes sensical, as appealing to the artist’s sensibility, given the sects exacting design credo.

Elise Ferguson, “Shaker”, 2025, pigmented plaster and pencil on panel, 48 x 36 inches

 

Shaker, a black and white work, a display of kanji-like cells harboring Ferguson’s signature parallel lines that track and curve in unison unfurls. Vibrating with the a pulse of intensity exhibited in the best of Brigit Riley that can bring heart palpitations upon sustained viewing. Ferguson has claimed Polly Collins’ 1854 drawing, An Emblem of the Heavenly Sphere, as inspiration, observable in the similitude of scheme between the two works.

In theory, the skills involved–from wielding a putty knife to a squeegee–portend bloodless visions. Ferguson circumvents expectation by leaving the pencil grids in full view, while she just as easily could have erased them, as well as embracing bleeding edges and skittering mis-registration smears and blotches. These graces of incident offset the dry symmetry of finish with an accumulation of incident as records of execution; testaments to handmade currency, denying intellectual supremacy.

Elise Ferguson, “Bench”, 2025, pigmented plaster and pencil on panel, 30 x 40 inches


Elise Ferguson, “JoJo Water”, 2025, pigmented plaster and pencil on panel, 40 x 30 inches

Ferguson’s discreet composing has been justifiably bestowed † as demonstrating musical cadence. Indeed, rhythm is particularly resonant in the two mirroring predominantly blue works, Bench and JoJo Water, with fevered pitch.

Elise Ferguson, “JoJo”, 2025, ink and pencil on Irish linen, 79 x 141x 30
 

 The outsized works, Charms and JoJo, both 2025, ‡ constructed from articulated canvases (pointedly listed as Irish linen § on the checklist), jut out muscularly from the wall. Resembling folding decorative floor screens that have been rendered useless, their verso cordoned off, by virtue of their mounting. The inaccessible inner sanctum void view/use opens the door to a psychologically fraught read, contingent in part on the resemblance to the flexing walls of a funhouse of mirrors (thinking of the pivotal penultimate scene from The Lady from Shanghai) beyond the jazzy surface patterns.

Charms taps a muted palette, recalling a mundane array of referents ranging from innocuous decoration printed on paper towels, to down-market newsprint flyer art, and sun-bleached signage, acknowledges the beauty in the low-key and the quotidian.

Reis & Manwaring, “Gold”, 1973, serigraph, 44 x 44 inches
 

Ferguson’s reliance on serial work (i.e. a body of work that operates as a series), that grew out of Picasso’s inclination towards variations on a given theme, and reached full-flowering in the 70s, contributes to the nostalgic strain she has embraced.

An inkling of Sol LeWitt’s sardonic seriality can be found in Ferguson’s rifling, whose hybrid fresco mode brings comparison to the Minimalists’ wall drawings, sans LeWitt’s temporal element.

Mid-century Supergraphics are clearly a retro sourcing for Ferguson. Stereolab album covers, to give just one updated example, engage in the appetite for this particular throwback revival that is instantly associated with the era of bell bottom jeans and Disco.

Despite speaking to a ‘one-size-fits-all’ disposition, Ferguson’s modular strategy manages to establish a mantra of energized meditation.

Elise Ferguson, “Peach”, 2025, pigmented plaster and pencil on panel, 40 x 30 inches
 

Peach, Lemongrass, and Tower, inflected with brilliant acid shades–from hot pink, to sunny yellow, and succulent orange, respectively–work through arrangements curiously reminiscent of Saul Bass.

Peach and Tower, composed of an elongated march of stylized exclamation points that are bisected (truncated) by a hand-painted band of green, that delivers a focused stoppage, generate swingin’ London/head shop poster vibes. While Lemongrass offers a further variation at play in Bench and JoJo Water.

Elise Ferguson, “Lemongrass”, 2025, pigmented plaster and pencil on panel, 40 x 30 inches
 

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* Incidentally, Ferguson took her education in Chicago, a center of Modernist architecture, provides another aspect of connection to the discipline.
† Cited in the gallery Press Release.
‡ All works cited in this piece are from 2025.
§ Pointedly, given Ferguson’s background, a fabric commonly associated with production of garments.

Elise Ferguson: Threshold
SHRINE
368 Broadway, New York, NY
May 9–June 21, 2025