Andrea Fourchy (B. 1990) lives and works in New York. She graduated from UC Davis in 2012. This is her second solo exhibition at Lomex. She has participated in group exhibitions at Doyers Street, New York; Greene Naftali, New York; Maria Bernheim, Zurich; Svetlana, New York, Gaudel de Stampa, Paris, among others, and had a two person exhibition with Sergej Jensen at Avlskarl, Copenhagen (2016).

Andrea Fourchy

"Wet Paint: Biden’s Granddaughter Has a Secret Art-Filled Instagram, NYC Gallery Gets Spiffy New Space, & More Art-World Gossip"

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed vitae mauris vitae mauris volutpat fringilla. Proin cursus sem non dolor congue pretium. Pellentesque imperdiet nisi.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut luctus varius malesuada. In ultricies ex nisl, tincidunt tempus eros consectetur a. Ut a massa eget.

, 2023
Oil, acrylic, and mylar on linen
51 x 69 x 1 inches

The lyrics to “Blue Moon” start out melancholy – “you saw me standing alone” – and end hopeful – “now I’m no longer alone,” completing an arc to dreamy chords. A standard that has never fallen from popularity, it’s now been construed by so many voices and instruments, it sticks to the sides of any moment: it soundtracks a movie’s fade-out, accompanies a head-phoned walk home, or beckons a slow dance in a glittery gymnasium. Its title speaks to a cosmic rarity that stands for romantic determination, a moment that is pure possibility, to be taken or, devastatingly, left.

Andrea Fourchy was listening to a few versions of “Blue Moon” while creating these works, layering, as the song does, darkness and light, washing color over earlier starts while letting these echoes and outlines act as the pieces’ skeletons. Elvis’s face, a crescent, the silhouettes of California trees, and the magnified flakes of snow falling behind globed glass appear not only super-saturated but as watery distortions, flattened copies, covers of a cover.

Scenes can feel, even if combed with thick color and collaged with industrial mylar, either reflected onto or as seen from below the surface of a swimming pool, that contrived place of introspection. They are as loud and incoherent as what one hears when diving into a blue-tinted pool just to stare at the sky from underwater, the sound of near-isolation and weightlessness. The palms, the skyscrapers, the blazing sun are all as wet as one’s tears, which are undetectable under there.

Early renditions of “Blue Moon” by 1930s jazz singers are decrees about the existence of romance: it is here, or about to be, just before last call. As Billie Holiday sings it, this was maybe the final night she’s given herself to find love. Ella Fitzgerald is more enamored with the orb in the sky than with the person under it. When done by the Supremes, Diana Ross has backing vocals while she sings about being lonely, none when she sings about meeting another. Elvis rolls the melody around in his mouth like hard candy, teasing that he could always bite down or spit it out.

Fourchy’s covers of the song push up against its undecidedness, too. They are bright, but an eeriness seeps through them; they are punctuated with printmaking gestures but growing wild; they romanticize painterliness, landscapes, and “Blue Moon” lyrics, while courting the grotesque and unruly. Bluntly cut tape and yolk-yellow scribbles conjure warning signs in caution colors, sloppily forged autographs, the rancid aftermath of something that might happen all the time, or once in a blue moon.

(Something about the mixing of such precious subjects, plasticky tones, and makeshift shiny decals reminds of the rockabilly genre that Elvis inhabited and then outgrew, the specifics of a twangy, crooning blend that has since become defined by its own retro reprisal. Say 

 now and you will likely mean the nouveau version of a midcentury greaser: growling punk covers, colorful cartoon tattoos. “Blue moon, baby,” sings Lux Interior of psychobilly outfit the Cramps over a medley of familiar licks, about a clichéd “crazy little chick.”)

Through one of the many doo-wop versions of “Blue Moon,” the Marcels (in harmony, never solo) are urging us kids: don’t let your youth pass you by! Frank Sinatra, when he sings it, is proposing a nightcap in a beautiful hotel bar. Cowboy Junkies’ Margo Timmins reaches out to Elvis’s ghost and to all lost loves, changing the words so that loneliness comes back to haunt; a lover strays and then dies, making the rarity of true affection even rarer.

It depends on the singer’s intonation, the painter’s intention, the quickness of a brushstroke, the wavering of a recording – how you mean it, or once meant it – these iterations all indicate. “You saw me standing alone, without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own.” It’s been said a million times, and yet, there are always other ways to say it.