finally Bridget, 2021. Acrylic and mixed media on mulberry paper on wood, 60 x 48 inches.
UMOCA and the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation are pleased to announce that the New York-based artist Chie Fueki has been awarded the 2023 Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting. A generous biannual prize made possible with funds from the Doctorow Foundation, the prize comes with a solo exhibition of Fueki’s artwork at UMOCA from September 29, 2023 through January 6, 2024.
Chie Fueki (b. 1973) lives and works in Beacon, NY. Fueki was born in Yokohama, Japan, and raised in São Paulo, Brazil. She earned her MFA at Yale University and her BFA at The Ringling College of Art and Design. She is an inaugural recipient of the 2021 Joan Mitchell Fellowship and a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2022), the Purchase Prize (2021, 2004), and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award (2004) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Recent solo exhibitions of Fueki’s work include: DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY (2022); Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2005, 2008, 2013, 2023); Mary Boone Gallery, New York, NY (2006, 2011); Orlando Museum of Art, FL (2014); Mother Gallery, Beacon, NY (2020), and Bill Maynes Gallery, New York, NY (2002, 2003).
Of the work, Jared Steffensen, Curator of Exhibitions, states, “UMOCA is honored to award Chie Fueki the 2023 Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting. We look forward to sharing Chie’s colorful, bold, and visually complex paintings with our Utah community.”
Suzanne Larson, daughter of Catherine Doctorow, remarked, “Since the inception of the Catherine Doctorow Prize, we have worked hard to select artists who challenge and enhance the concept of painting. To that end, The Doctorow Family Foundation is delighted to continue that practice by awarding Chie with the prize this year.”
Visually striking and intricate, Chie Fueki’s paintings picture contemporary life in spectacular motion. Created through a complex system of painting, drawing, cutting, and collaging onto wood panels, Fueki’s practice uses multi-layered ornamental surfaces and fields of color to depict figures, symbols, and abstracted spaces.
Fueki’s work embraces the visual language from three distinct cultures, being a Japanese-born artist growing up in Brazil and later practicing in the United States. Fueki explains, “I consider myself a mixed-language painter with interest in eastern and western perspectival systems, architectural graphics, pop animation, pre-Renaissance European painting, and exuberant color.”