JULIA FISH American, b. 1950

Inclusively and theoretically, Julia Fish’s work can be characterized as both site-generated and context-specific: in temporary projects / installations, and in the on-going sequence of paintings and works on paper developed in response to a close examination of the experience of living and working within her home and studio, a 1922 two-storey brick storefront in Chicago. Fish has described this process as one which “opens onto questions and critical approaches to the practice of painting, to drawing, and to the nuances and implications of representation / re-presentation.” Concurrent and influential research interests include the related disciplines of architecture, architectural history and theory.

The work of Julia Fish (b. 1950, Toledo, Oregon) has been the subject of thirty solo exhibitions since 1980, and has twice been the subject of ‘ten-year’ survey exhibitions: Julia Fish : bound by spectrum, DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, 2019-2020; and View, The Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, 1996. Paintings and works on paper have been presented in exhibitions nationally and internationally, among others: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Schindler House, Los Angeles; Tang Museum, Skidmore College; The Menil Collection, Houston; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; Galerie Remise, Bludenz, Austria; 2010, the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art; The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Arts Alliance, Philadelphia. 

Fish’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; MacArthur Foundation, Chicago; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Denver Art Museum; Yale University Art Gallery; The Smart Museum of Art, as well as the Booth Collection, University of Chicago; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago; University of Michigan Museum of Art; Illinois State Museum, Springfield; Rockford Art Museum. Fish lives and works in Chicago. She is Professor Emerita, School of Art and Art History, and UIC Distinguished Professor.