New York City, June 2011

With its graphic style of bold lines, bizarro characters, and cartoon colors, Jeremy Fish’s art naturally lends itself to storytelling. In an unabashed celebration of this folk art form, Listen and Learn puts stories and storytellers front and center as Fish demonstrates the enduring appeal of storytelling in popular culture. The exhibition features assorted tales from a wide swath of contemporary life—including from artists, skateboarders, rappers, athletes, a stripper, a cop, and a historian—which Fish has reinterpreted in lovingly realized painted works. Rendered in acrylic on hand-cut wood panels, these thirty “story paintings” are accompanied by audio recordings of the source tales recounted by the original storytellers, available to gallery visitors on MP3 players and headphones mounted next to each work.

“My hope is that as viewers take in the artworks, they’ll be made curious enough to want to hear the stories,” says Jeremy Fish. “In this era of email, texting, and blogging, we are losing a grasp on the concept of sitting around the campfire and exchanging life experience through the telling of tall tales. I want to remind people of the importance of storytelling.”