What do we have here?

A trenchcoated raccoon breaking into a garage refrigerator; a scythe-wielding Death and a baby New Year; a man in a business suit carrying a can of gasoline. Fanelly spins these individual narrative threads into funny, fantastical yarns. This Constellation CLT installation spans 25 years of Fanelly’s work and includes prints, inlaid cut paper, paintings, and threedimensional constructions. Each presents a unique window through which we, the viewers, can peer, constructing our own story to explain what we see.

Fanelly’s compositions are composites—friends he asked to pose, sections of photographs spliced together, found images. Pandemic Still Life resulted from multiple visits to the orchid greenhouse at Daniel Stowe Botanical Gardens. An orchid still life in the Mint Store features a vase pulled from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s online collection. There are layered references—contemporary and historical. 18 Gerbera Daisies engages the traditional painting tension of line, color, and negative space while also playing with expectations of what a “still life” can be: a deliberation on life’s transience and mortality symbolized by beautiful flowers frozen in time. Fanelly’s paintings may be true to life or just possible in life, but Fanelly’s hope to halt the viewer and engage them in a narrative game, even for a moment, is always present.