When New York artist Louis Eisner was asked to create a solo exhibit for the Winter Street Gallery in Edgartown, he was reading Naked Lunch, the infamous novel by William S. Burroughs about drug addicts in the underworld.
Mr. Eisner became entranced with the characters and exploring the relationship between art and a higher power. Every morning, he grabbed a cup of coffee, took the bus to his studio, lifted his paintbrush and let his imagination take over.
A year later, on Friday, July 12, his solo exhibition, Persona non grata, opened at the gallery.
“The work is more of a doing than a saying. There’s nothing literal and there’s no message or moral,” Mr. Eisner said at the opening reception.
The exhibit features three paintings, two of which, F.C.S. Mariner and S.A.A. Rambler, are named after characters from Naked Lunch. One depicts a boat and the other a tire with deep green and blue oil paints.
The show also features two sculptures by Mr. Eisner.
Mr. Eisner’s wife, actress and businesswoman Ashley Olsen, attended the reception, along with several cousins who live in Chilmark.
Ingrid Lundgren, co-founder of the gallery, said the pieces are the largest the gallery has displayed since they opened in 2020. They are both nearly seven and a half feet long and priced at $32,000.
Mr. Eisner said he purchased recycled wallpaper from EBay and affixed it to the canvases to add dimension to his work.
“Wallpaper was one of the first materials used in collage,” Mr. Eisner said, referencing turn-of-the-century artists Pablo Picasso and Henry Matthew Brock. “It brings complexity to the surface and a sort of nostalgia. This idea perhaps that these paintings were cut-out of a wall or that they came from somewhere.”
Mr. Eisner described his art as rooted in a strong sense of classicism and featuring a rough realism. He began to explore this technique while studying art history at Columbia University.
Although this is Mr. Eisner’s first solo exhibit on the Island, he was featured here years ago in a group show.
“There’s a rich history of painters from Martha’s Vineyard, so I’m happy to be here and participate in that lineage,” Mr. Eisner said.
Persona non grata by Louis Eisner continues at the Winter Street Gallery through August 11.
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