Introduction to Andy Fitz
Unpublished, January 2023

Thinking-through-making is the responsive, self-critical and trust-based process through which Andy Fitz’s sculptures and installations are formed. As Fitz describes to me in a phone call to their Berlin studio, “To find things out, I need to make them”. The exploratory set of reflective actions that form Fitz’s work opens up an opportunity to express shifting and alternative ideas and values, rather than following an existing or pre-conceived pathway. By working through a very personal methodology, Fitz can remove themself from the work and give agency to materials and objects, as a form of roleplaying. Knowing which direction a sculpture is going, and following it along the way de-personalises the artist’s voice and invites a more communal experience, both between the artist and the work, and the work and its audience.

Fitz’s sculptures are generally figurative and hyper-representational to the point where intangible phenomena like light, shadow, smoke, and reflections are made physical, as solid forms or negative cutouts: a twist of painted and plaster-coated steel armature might mimic the curled wisp of smoke from an extinguished candle, or an entire form of a black cat sculpted upside-down and elongated (as if lying in the afternoon sun) touches paws with those of its more anatomically-correct upright mirror-image. Fitz’s object surfaces are typically painted in block colours: black, white, grey, terracotta; purposefully heavy and overladen like civic ornamentation (or an art gallery wall!) that is touched up and re-touched up year upon year, amassing layers that continuously expand and morph outwards from their original form. Figures are most often presented life-size, placed in relaxed or vulnerable poses but without features or identifiable physical attributes. Fitz also creates environments for these figures to be situated, most often in relation to sculpted furniture, and also by diffusing light and altering the tone of a space with the precarity and unfixedness of surrounding objects.

The non-functional furniture that continues to be an intrinsic constituent in Fitz’s work always has the recognisable attributes of each familiar object, without being defined by or linked to any specific cultural associations. Fitz described the need to make a chair-like sculpture “a chairy-chair”, an archetypal ‘version’ of a chair but as if modelled from a cardboard cut-out with parts missing or added. One of Fitz’s previous chair sculptures has an entire half missing to simulate strong rays of light cutting through what would normally be a solid wooden form. Another is made with an armrest extending outwards at an oblique angle to indicate the directional fall of a shadow. These sculptures, modelled on familiar objects that exist with a shared understanding for many people, are deliberately impelled by Fitz, who questions how far perception can extend in a binary-orientated world, where something is typically identified as only one thing or another unless it is freed by existing outside of expected norms.

Fitz is working towards a new exhibition that will open in Kerlin Gallery, Dublin in January 2023. At the time of writing, they are focussing on groups of new works that exist as series and are re-shapable, in the process of change, or produced through fleeting action. With all of these pieces, Fitz is working within self-defined rules to instruct the repetition of forms and configurations. A new sculpture that fuses generic IKEA-like floor lamps with an interpretation of wrought-iron railings, detailed with ornate curves, is rendered in Fitz’s characteristic painted plaster coating, and from a distance resembles a wobbly line drawing. The sections of combined lamps and fencing can be extended, shortened, and set at right angles, deviating from the route of the dividing sections. It is not permanently defined, so can be appropriated and re-formed as something different in future exhibitions. The decorative scroll-shaped ornamentation that also joins sections of the vertical railings is another adaptive feature of this installation. These shapes accumulate, extend, mirror and de-synchronise the otherwise repetitive pattern of the structure. This work is not rigid, very much unlike a standard iron railing, and so encourages a more playful, clumsy and ultimately human connection between itself and its audience. This complication of use, despite the working bulbs in the lamps, gives agency to the sculpture and its own voice that is relatable on a personal level rather than as an object designed and produced for human application. The sculpture collides interior and exterior space and reinforces its own non-functionality compared to its ‘real world’, separate counterparts.

A new series of smaller figurative sculptures, that reference kitsch mantlepiece ceramics, are also being prepared for the exhibition. These figurines take the form of a person with the enlarged sleeves of a baggy t-shirt and shorts jutting out from their arms and legs. The original sculpture will be cast and replicated several times but each version will be morphed or reformed in a different way along another set of self-imposed rules, that can be broken or diverted. Each ‘ornament’ (as described by Fitz) holds only a slight alteration to its original shape, differentiated by the addition of an accessory, or further carving of detail on the body. Rather than becoming something else entirely through the process, Fitz highlights minor different characteristics from the homogeneity of the collective. They describe how each of these ornamental sculptures is the first in its own world and one helps to form an imprint on the next. Fitz explains that the intention for these sculptures is to “find other ways of being” and “never having a specific self” whilst acknowledging that representation of open and fluid individuality and self-expression is complicated and intrinsically tied to mainstream traditional hierarchical codes.

When viewed through the perspective of Fitz’s current studio work in progress, their existing practice to date takes on new levels of expanded meaning. Fitz’s 2018 exhibition, Knock, Knock (Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin) included figures in awkward or clumsy states of positioning and dress. Entirely clad in layer upon layer of blue denim, these sculptures symbolically communicated a desire to escape or become unravelled from constricting associations. In their 2019 exhibition, OK (Kerlin Gallery, Dublin), Fitz populated the gallery with another group of human-scale figurative sculptures that reference the poses, movements, clothing, and accessories of football players or fans. Their uniform of plain white sculpted shorts and t-shirts questions pathways to the homogenisation of identity but also, highlights the importance of communities that hold shared values that cross demographic forms of identification such as gender and race. Fitz describes how “sports bodies are bodies that are already represented by their activities”. They also call attention to the limitations of collectivism by conjoining figures, trapping them inside their own solid-formed outfits and, even though they are projecting movement, joy and exhilaration, they are held in static forms. This is emphasised by the use of real-world objects (balanced footballs, trailing scarves) and Fitz’s sculpted furniture. This surrounding paraphernalia is used to define and fix bodies within a space and context and emphasises the divides between constructed modes of communal identity, genuine collective inclusivity, and individual representation.

Even considering the proximity to familiarity and the everyday in Fitz’s work, they strive to disengage from real-world materiality. Their carefully formulated works reject aesthetics that are regarded as being pure, natural or orderly, by deliberately incorporating features that are crude, kitsch and even shambolic. By trusting and following their work on its own course, Fitz defies the ever-present limitations of pre-conception by working a way through or out of ideas that otherwise become customary, expected and eventually the establishment if left unchallenged.