FIGURE 11

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Oil bar and paint on particle board

FULTON FISH MARKET: FROZEN MOTION

GIA MAINIERO

I grew up down the block from the Fulton Fish Market. The market itself was always an enigma to me, knowing nothing more of it than the beeping of trucks parking late at night, the bright lights at the end of the block, the shiny slick on the streets, and the smell that lingered throughout the day.

When the market’s closing was announced, I decided to visit on an early morning to see up close my mysterious long-term neighbors. Expecting to be more interested in the activity of the market and bustle of the sales, I was surprised to find myself completely absorbed by the fish themselves—how alive they looked, frozen in position as if still in midswim, eyes staring back up at me. The bright colors of their skin against the silvery ice and rusty steel bins gave a mystical feel to the bare fluorescent-lit market building. They didn’t seem dead but simply frozen in a sort of limbo between the sea and their final fate in a New York restaurant.

As I set out to capture this in my paintings, I became interested in both the table that these creatures rested on—the consistent horizon—and the ice in which they were nestled—the substance that broke this line and suspended them again, as if still in water. The ice became an adventure of its own—how to depict a material with no form besides that of the creatures buried under it, and with no color other than the reflections of the fish’s metallic skin. In the paintings, it served as both a cradle for the fish, to reveal certain parts of their bodies, and to allow others to sink below and disappear. The ice also became a field of negative space on the page, allowing the painting to also surface and submerge.