…Although many twisted animals or twisted characters of multiple beasts may seem dark and disturbing, he insists that his work is not pathological…
It is no surprise that Fosik lives a rather nomadic life, spreading across one place throughout his career and drawing inspiration from multiple locations, with hubs in Portland or Philadelphia and Denver. As his work evolved, he had transitioned from original two-dimensional illustrations, working almost entirely in his animal making. However, even as the medium continues to evolve, Fosik’s work remains bright, fierce and very colorful. Whether it is a two-bear covered with autumn fur, tearing its intestines a chain of what should be the intestines, or a golden goat with a tongue, reminiscent of Gene Simmons, Fosik’s use and metal textiles expand the fantasy.
Throughout his growing career, Fosik has been exhibited in galleries across the United States and around the world, from Philadelphia, Austin and San Francisco to France and Mexico abroad. He is represented by Library Street collectively in his hometown of Detroit and New York City’s Jonathan Levine Gallery. He was even commissioned to create the album cover of Mastodon’s fifth studio album, The Hunter, and documented the structure of the work Fosik represented in the band’s music video “Black Tongue”.
His latest solo exhibition was held in the Library Street collective in mid-2017, called From Maturity to Rotten. The show features the duality of Fosik’s unnatural beasts as they are prey of various dilemmas, such as the puncture of artificial arrows, the puncture of snakes or just good old-fashioned fighting royals. In the show, the intense feeling of Ouroboros images (snakes eat their own tail) spreads over many of Fosik’s wall-mounted works such as “Rise Up, flips to two points, pulling the pieces into pieces”, with two snakes around a headless cat, located under the human skull. The image of this snake continues to reach one of the core of the show, “Pengtuli, bell-shaped”, a separate polyhorn deer cut off from the waist and six familiar black snakes emanate from their mouths.
