Eric Fischl: Couples
Skarstedt, Paris
October 20 – December 6, 2025
Skarstedt presents the exhibition Eric Fischl: Couples, an exhibition devoted to the artist’s recent work, in Paris. Four years after his first exhibition Eric Fischl: My Old Neighborhood, which inaugurated the Paris gallery, ERIC FISCHL returns with a series on the historical theme of couples - whether mythological, literary or cinematic – as well as the feelings that are intrinsically linked to relationships: fidelity, passion, and love, but also breakups, betrayal and solitude.
Renowned for his depiction of the human figure, Eric Fischl’s naturalistic paintings captures moments of everyday life, featuring characters from the American middle class. Having been raised in the suburbs of Long Island, Fischl’s quasi-autobiographical works provide food for thought about American society, where image culture, sexuality and the troubles of couple relations are recurrent themes.
Each painting is imbued with a tragic tranquillity, the characters belonging to a true “casting” of actors that the artist mobilises to tell an intimate story. The direction of his narratives guides the choice of protagonists he employs, taken from his own photographs, working, in a way, as a director. Roadsides, hotel rooms, suburbs, swimming pools: these are all cinematic settings that serve as backdrops for his works, where apparent stillness masks deeper psychological unease.
Fischl’s characters rarely make eye contact—either with the viewer of the others in the composition— but are often driven by a desire to get closer to one another. The viewer becomes a witness to scenes populated by the unspoken, where an imminent incident risks triggering a rift or, alternatively, a healing complicity. The proximity of bodies juxtaposed to their emotional distance and nebulous dynamics are at the heart of Couples. The series presents duos - companions or strangers - suspended in moments of immobility, where narrative certainty is withheld and the viewer is left to navigate the emotional terrain between the figures.
Since the 1980s, the artist has been constructing these pictorial episodes of great intensity from his memories and his own photographic montages. With lucidity, Eric Fischl reveals the other side of the American way of life, exploring the invisible flaws of intimacy, desire and the human condition in a tragicomic tone. In Fischl’s own words, “When something happens beyond what is expected, and whose very nature strips you of your armour, that’s the definition of tragedy. Ambiguity is then the only way to move towards understanding.”
SKARSTED PARIS
2 Avenue Matignon 75008 Paris
Previous Exhibitions at Skarstedt Paris:
Sue Williams, June 5 – July 25, 2025
Chantal Joffe: The Dog's Birthday, April 3 – May 31, 2025
Self-Portraits , February 13 – March 29, 2025
Andy Warhol: Who is Who?, October 14 – December 21, 2024
