Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art proudly presents the opening of Eric Finzi: FEEL, a special one-week exhibition which will be on view from March 7-15 before traveling to New York City. An accomplished painter, dermatological surgeon, scientist and author, this is Eric Finzi's first-ever exhibition in California.

The exhibition showcases Finzi's mixed media and epoxy resin paintings all centering on a single subject: Augustine, the documented patient of neurologist Professor Jean-Martin Charcot at the notorious Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. Institutionalized for hysteria in the 1870s, the young woman was, for many years, the subject of experimental treatments and lengthy photographic documentation of her episodic outbursts. After several years of incarceration, Augustine disguised herself as a man and escaped the psychiatric ward, never to be seen again.

Created using syringes and needles filled with pigment and epoxy resin, FEEL's mixed media compositions depict the disturbing treatments imposed on the young patient while highlighting themes of danger, dynamism, fear and loss. The evocative and haunting paintings --combining heat, cold, wind, gravity, viscosity-- appear as charged and uncontrollable in subject matter as they are in their medium. The artist describes his works as a play in three Acts: The resin used creates a series of chemical reactions, allowing the paint to move after application until it reaches its final state -- the image that the viewer sees.

Image: © Eric Finzi, Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art