Exhibits Fancy and Staple Gallery

The Geometry of Yearning

Josef Zimmerman
Josef Zimmerman painting designs in his workshop.

The devil is in the details and in Josef Zimmerman’s case, it’s a Flame Elemental.Forgotten Transmissions” at Fancy and Staple Gallery. In each of Zimmerman’s exhibits, there is a hearkening back to childhood. Sometimes it is a collection of his father’s beer cans, a series of converse Hi-Tops stretching back to his baby carriage or a recreation of his desk at parochial school. The Flame Elemental is a toy from that time, it is a wad of poorly painted, injection-molded vinyl. No moving parts, unblinking eyes, crummy paint job, made in Hong Kong. Zimmerman has selected this artifact to represent his latest body of work for the “Forgotten Transmissions” show at Fancy and Staple Gallery in downtown Fort Wayne. Other pieces include meticulous geometric patterns, hand painted onto raw wood, machine-like and perfect. They offer a calm counterpoint to the messiness of the shadowboxed objects in museum quality cases.

The dialog between the disparate pieces goes beyond simple coincidence. There is a subtext that speaks to the desire for agency in a messy life and the need to create totems against a complicated early life that can’t or won’t be rewritten to provide meaning.

Flame Element
3 toys from the past.

The geometry of yearning for control. What part of this conversation does the single, enshrined bone represent? Is it the finality of death? Do the painted wood pieces operate in the now, suspended, like ourselves, between unwitting birth and inevitable death? Are they an effort to erect some order in the chaos?

Like all satisfying stories, there is a beginning, middle and end to the works displayed, a timeline that presents itself upon further scrutiny. The painted geometrics offer a cool shadow to rest in, away from the relentless glare of windows to the past and future. Linger and enjoy the peace for a moment.

Opening Saturday, May 11, 6-9 PM. 1111 Broadway, Fort Wayne, Indiana 46802

(260) 422-2710

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Fort Wayne Legend Makes it Happen

Please make your way down to Fancy and Staple and check out this solo show before it is too late.


Fancy and Staple Gallery

Known Particles: the Photography of Josef Zimmerman

Opening: December 10th

Fancy and Staple Gallery

Ruins get all the glory, the bigger, the better. Everyone shakes their collective head at the spectacle of the gilded-age theater fallen in on itself, the sanitariums full of weeds, nature reasserting itself through every crack and crevice.

Josef Zimmerman’s show of recent photographs, “Known Particles” at the Fancy and Staple Gallery is having none of that showy dilapidation. To his eye the most evocative examples of entropy are the small ones. A plate, homey and common, sits on a table blackened by time. The point of view is from the person who left the table, deserting the meal, the kitchen and possibly the planet. You have returned to find the only change is the passive passage of days, the rays of the sun striking the evidence of humankind with its invisible, tiny particles and with each infinitesimal blow, knocking off an atom’s worth of memory.

dailydisIt is the intimate quality of Zimmerman’s work that draws you in and glimpses the daily disentegrations of the past, present and future, in equal parts arresting and mundane.

Known Particles
Nov. 21st through January 27th
1111 Broadway, Fort Wayne, IN 46802
(260) 422-2710

Facebook Event for Opening

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To The Letter: Justin Lim at Fancy & Staple

Justin Lim’s exhibition of recent works at the Fancy & Staple gallery is a testament to the steady hand and exacting eye of its creator. The line work is executed without the benefit of rulers, vinyl or tape, just Justin and the glass or the wood or the taxidermy fish. The lines are bold and sometimes retina searing. The subject matter references West Coast car culture and flash art found in mid-20th Century tattoo parlors. Yet, something is amiss. That snarling tiger chest-piece is a deformed, three-eyed monster. That panther rampant reveals a drooling Rat Fink head.

It is this dissonance that makes the work about more than just the process. There is a knowing subtext that is both surreal (in the “Looney Tunes” school of twisted reality), and commonplace (in the “This is the tattoo your seafaring grandpa had on his arm.” school of the everyday.)

The trio of taxidermy fish is the most subtle reminder of death, the absurdity of life and redneck cultural appropriation. The fish are the product of the bygone ritual of enshrining the vacation’s best catch for all to see. They are proxies for prowess, but these trophies have fallen out of fashion and now must endure the humiliation of being marked with fleeting, often snide, Internet slang. “IDGAF” brands  a salmon that’s seen better days. The letters “HOLA”, rendered in letters so perfect they seem like computer-aided hallucinations, levitate off the side of a largemouth bass. The preserved and mounted fish represent the wish of the fisherman to forever display dominion, hearkening back to the cult of the gentleman sportsman of Victorian England/Theodore Roosevelt era. By branding these symbols of trashed antiquity with transient, digital-age slang, Lim thumbs his nose at the self-aggrandizing tropes of each age.


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Tanner Wilson at the Fancy and Staple Gallery

Crowd at F&amp;S

“Why the Hell not?” Tanner Wilson ponders the eternal question in his latest body of work on display at the boutique gallery, Fancy and Staple. Why indeed? Cartoon icons float on cotton candy colored backgrounds, utterly devoid of rendering or, if you believe Tanner’s own words, meaning. Inspired by random words, sentences and images, it is apparent that Mr. Wilson is not just in the midst of a post-graduate rejection of ART-SCHOOL gestalt, but rather, is actively tapping into a deep wellspring of pre-loaded, potent images.

This is Tanner’s Fort Wayne solo debut. He grew up in the Fort Wayne Area and attended St. Francis but has since relocated to Atlanta, Georgia. This show is a homecoming of sorts. Friends, family and even strangers filled the small reception. Many laid their money down to own a piece of /by Tanner Wilson. The night was a success.

Painting of a cut-off tiger head, floating to the bottom of the sea
“Younger Days” 12×12  Acrylic on panel $500

A painting called “Younger Days” shows a disembodied tiger’s head floating suspended in perfect azure. Tiny bubbles escape to the surface while a straight razor drifts down in tandem. The eyes are open and staring, uncomprehending as the blood flows in the red ribbons of a sunburst, wreathing the face. The tiger would like to look away, but there is nothing left to do but watch as the last bits of consciousness recede. He is carried inexorably to the bottom. Happy Mother’s Day.


This show runs April 25th to July 2nd, 2016. For more information about sales of Tanner’s work, please contact the Fancy and Staple Gallery at (260) 422-2710.

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St. Monci Show at Fancy and Staple

Opening Event: March 12th 5-7

‘Unmanned Missions’–New work by St. Monci Fancy and Staple Gallery March 1st-April 24th Curated by Josef Zimmerman

The Fancy and Staple Gallery (1111 Broadway, Fort Wayne, IN) is set to open an exhibition of paintings from New York based artist, St. Monci.

Working from his studio in Rochester, he has carefully crafted a cohesive, abstract body of work that is based on pure geometrical elements in relationships that suggest floating mono- liths in space.

The order and precision of line references the craftsmanship of a blueprint and the choice of color reveals a refined and subtle command of the color wheel. Each work is displayed in a bespoke frame whose rounded corners contribute to the overall impression of old world atten- tion to detail. Monci’s use of non-representational imagery and geometrical forms in pictorial space create a Zen-like atmosphere that invites quiet contemplation.

It’s what the Russian Constructivists would have made had they been able to continue to create outside the sound and fury of revolution. If anything, St. Monci’s works are propaganda of another kind, promoting a life of appreciation for the chance intersections of shape and color ascending and descending in front of an infinity wall of subtle hues. The shapes are painted in the preferred medium of precision renderers everywhere, gouache.

St. Monci was raised in Puerto Rico where he lived up through his teenage years. He went on to study at SUNY Oswego where he received his BFA and MA. He has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in New York State, Oregon, New Jersey, California, Washington D.C. and Canada.IMG_4812