Geri Librizzi Fournier Contact • About • Recent Work

Artist Bio

Geri Fournier lives and works in New York. She began her studies in fashion design at FIT before moving on to study fine art at Queens College and then at the Art Students League. Fournier has a background in classical ballet and classical voice and has worked as a singer, performer and teacher. In the past she has exhibited her artwork in Orleans, Massachusetts at the Star Gallery and in New York City at the 400 Gallery, the Niveau Gallery, the Crush City Gallery, and solo show in 2001 as well as a shared a show with Madeline Mono in 2000 at the Eighth Floor Gallery. Although she became ill in 2002, which affected her ability to emerge herself in the New York art scene for the past eight years, she has been zealously working on a body of work consisting of fifty-two pieces in mixed media based primarily on emotional self-portraiture.

Astrid Bruner Review of 2001 show at Eight Floor Gallery

Geri Fournier: Waves

Astrid Brunner, with Norvat Balch

Snapshot-sized pencil drawings larger than life. Starkly lit self-portraits intensely sensuous. Self-absorption imparting itself to the public eye. These are not "featheriight", as Louise Bourgeois had it of her own drawings, not "just a little help." These are the real thing. Final. Inevitable. Though ever changing. "I aim to capture those complex moments between fixed expressions," says Foumier of her most recent forty-image work, Portraits. Two of these drawings must be read as a diptych - face drowning in hair as in waves. Virginia Wootf presaging her stream-of-consciousness death. The yes and the no, a Leonor Fini diptych of a girl with eyes open, eyes closed. But now the woman. Foamier talks about "the myriad of possibilities the human face holds." Her diminutive, though never small, pencil portraits recall the Fini print, its crystal precision and wild tenderness. Wooif, Fini, Bourgeois, sphinx-like awareness of energy and wave-like flux. Themes of conflict, loneliness and vulnerability, of courage and provocation. An emotional teatra del mundo drawn from the unconscious. "It is both painful and joyous to unveil my psyche, yet after the works are completed, their totality becomes she." This "universal face" is the face of womankind - a face baptized by water, cradled by waves. Where light is drama. And time unfolds. Q

May 2001 BBgARTSl 95

Artist Statement

Emotional intensity in life fascinates me and inspires the subject matter of my most recent art. In this work I turned to using my face as the vehicle for the subject matter. I acted and modeled for many years and am very comfortable in front of a camera and making faces in a mirror. I believe that the face is a consummate tool for expression. It felt natural for me to explore vast ways to contort my face to convey aspects of human nature from distressing to pleasant.

My favorite and strongest area in art is drawing. I feel that it is the barebones of art similar to my preference of watching a dance or musical rehearsal more then the actual performance itself. I mean for my drawings to be finished works in themselves, and not just sketches towards a piece containing color or texture to make it more important. I somehow always loved the purity of the hand, the pencil, and the paper to say what I want.

The works in other mediums happened almost inadvertently, but by the time I was finished with them I realized they were necessary to tell the whole story. As the work was going on, most of the time no matter how disturbing the pieces were, I found them humorous and always called them “she” as if they were not connected to me. It wasn't until recently when I inadvertently encountered the “burnt bride” in a dark room and looked eye level into her eyes shining in the night's light, the same shade as mine that I realized all these pieces were actually autobiographical. This moment of revelation of how I was denying the story of my life led to a catharsis that was profound and brought psychologically to me the truth and also finality of the fifty some odd pieces I had been working on these past years.