Eric McHenry: Fear of the Fiddle
Opening: July 17th, 6-8 PM
July 17th – August 13th, 2025
Half Gallery (Annex) 233 E 4th St
New York, NY 10009
Comprised of small-scale still-lifes and figurative subjects in almost equal parts, Eric McHenry’s recent solo show presents less of a divide but more of a continuum between the two genres. Situated at one end of the figure/object spectrum, Winter Lady exemplifies the most conventional approach McHenry takes towards an individual. The titular character is poised before a backdrop of trees and sky, all suffused in greyscale tones. Casting her icy gaze from Half Gallery’s window front, she doubles as the show’s emissary, casually entreating passersby. Entering the show, we depart into stranger territory.
We first come to The Hunchback of Arles, who cranes over his stooped frame as an ambiguous sentiment plays in his eyes. This work’s gestalt is as singular and anonymous as the type of painting that tends to surface in estate sales or flea markets; always depicting an innocuous subject somehow haunted by an aura that threatens to follow one home. Others pose with the implements of their trade; a Soloist grasps the neck of his fiddle, a Juggler and his orbs capture surreal geometry. As with such personas, who McHenry distills against simple or wholly blank backgrounds, his still lifes embody a direct and refreshing simplicity. One can’t help but think of Morandi’s quiet, muddy poems in the sentience of Three Balls. Four Queens boldly lay upon a green felt card table; Under a Full Moon, a fiddle vertically hangs upon a tree trunk, ready to drink in lunar influences. In the painting Viscera 6, the two ends of the human/object continuum converge, fittingly, within this depiction of the artist’s organs. While still lifes can easily assume a secondary position when featured alongside figurative works, they play an equal part in sustaining a larger world that we glimpse through Eric’s canvases. While Three Balls’ connection to Juggling is never made explicit, it is impossible not to infer a continuity, which opens us to the narrative dimensions of Eric’s practice.
“Fear of the Fiddle”, like most compelling show titles, is borrowed from a literary work. In one scene of this short story by Sam Shepard, the narrator discusses Colonial settlers’ superstitions regarding the instrument; how American colonists regarded skilled fiddle playing as emblematic of demonic possession or of the player being in close rapport with the Devil. Flanked by jugglers’ balls, playing cards, and fiddles, McHenry’s cast of folk characters, who may all engage one another in secret lives, articulate a coherent world. The Influencer’s devilish features take on a narrative significance; its title likewise lends an ironic insight: we understand the contemporary internet-based profession of the “influencer”, but just as he has been nick-named “The Opposer” or “The Adversary”, the Devil himself may just as easily have been originally dubbed “The Influencer” in Medieval Europe.
McHenry’s is a Lynchian world of ordinary American life suffused with mystery. Always including the possibility of supernatural forces, the source of this mystery is never explicit but only glimpsed through a passing glance or a portentous arrangement of objects on a table. As with Shepard’s tale, whose protagonist is inducted by his coworker into a world of vice, McHenry’s show traffics in the American underworld and the unheimlich dimensions of life immune to Puritan discipline. Indeed, like the late David Lynch, McHenry allows Biblically dimensioned Evil, but not without its counterpoint of the Good, in this case, embodied by the optimism of McHenry’s intent.
This narrative context formed between Western Europe and Colonial America likewise reflects McHenry’s own artistic development and formation. From the Dutch Golden Age to Early American, it is evident he has gorged himself on the Canon of European Painters. Franz Hals, Picasso, Munch, Degas, Rembrandt – all coat the microbiome of Eric’s psychic flora. But these influences have been studiously ingested and metabolized rather than worn as a skin. Passing by The Wizard, we are caught in the conjuror’s cool gaze as swirling visages play about his shoulders. The sensation is like encountering a James Ensor for the first time, but blended with McHenry’s sensibility and application of paint.
Eric synthesizes something timeless from the Western Canon without self-conscious concern for performing novelty, but nevertheless succeeds in mobilizing traditional subjects like musicians as a vehicle for his concerns as an artist. This sincerity of approach is consistent and, one would argue, the advantage of McHenry having been self-taught. Eric escapes the trap of ironic detachment that trained and pressured visual artists may fall victim to. Instead, McHenry’s personal drive to capture something in these pieces is tangible; we detect no desired effect on the audience, but a desired effect that Eric attempts to capture for himself.