After they are completely saturated, he paddles back to the coral sand beach and lays the canvas out to dry, creating visions reminiscent of ancient petroglyphs. After the winter rains on the North Shore of Oahu have subsided, he paddles up the river with large pieces of untreated canvas on the nose of his surfboard, staining them in the iron-oxide-rich red earth washed down from volcanoes. In his Blood Water paintings, Fletcher uses mineral-rich earth from the Waimea River, Hawaii. Similar to their surfboard counterparts, they form a cacophony of logos and images. The board recurs in the Wall of Disaster series, which features masses of skateboards mounted to the wall in anarchic accumulations. The accumulated boards tell oblique stories about the culture of surfing. For years now, elite surfers, known as “Wave Warriors,” have saved their boards to be made into Wrecktangles. Fletcher’s Wrecktangles are large sculptures made from once-perfect, custom surfboards that have been ridden and broken by the greatest contemporary tube riders at the Banzai Pipeline in Hawaii. To commemorate the publication of the book, Gagosian will install artworks from four different series by Herbie Fletcher at 976 Madison Avenue. She then goes on to narrate her union with Herbie, as well as the lives of their sons Christian and Nathan, both surfers, and their grandson, Greyson, a renowned skateboarder, all of whom have erased the boundaries between surfing and skateboarding. Dibi’s recollections begin with her childhood memories of her father, big-wave surfing pioneer Walter Hoffman. Throughout the volume, the family’s intimate storyline is augmented with anecdotes from luminaries including surfing legend Gerry Lopez, Mike Diamond of the Beastie Boys, artist Julian Schnabel, eleven-time world champion pro surfer Kelly Slater, and Steve Van Doren, of the Vans skate shoe company. Now, Fletcher: A Lifetime in Surf, written by Dibi Fletcher-wife of Herbie and matriarch of what Esquire has called “surfing’s first family”-simultaneously traces the evolution of the Fletcher family’s life and offers an oral history of surfing’s counterculture from the 1950s to today. The legendary Fletcher family has been an institution and guiding presence in surf and skate culture for decades, with an influence that extends to the worlds of fashion, music, streetwear, and art. Gagosian is pleased to present an exhibition celebrating the publication of Fletcher: A Lifetime in Surf by Rizzoli in 2019.
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