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Honor Fraser is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Rob Fischer,
opening Saturday April 2, 6 to 8pm, and on view through May
7.
Fischer works in the vein of the transformative. Living and working in Brooklyn,
the artist combines the influence of the rural landscape and more specifically
the landscape of his native Minnesota and everyday urban life along with the
strong influence of the Minimalists of the 1960s and 1970s in his work. Using
salvaged material from abandoned buildings, junkyards, and defunct school
gymnasiums, Fischer repurposes objects that began as ruined ghosts of things
once functional. By slicing, cutting and decapitating, he extends the lifecycle
of these materials; a boat is cut into multiple segments, reassembled as a new
work and dissembled again. The basis for much of Fischer's work is the notion of
memory. Recent work has been inspired by the mythology of the American road trip
and the endless roadways and highways that intersect and connect the forgotten
pockets of the country.
In this exhibition Fischer presents three sculptures that further develop and
explore themes seen throughout his work. The artist recently participated in
the Hammer Projects series, installing a major sculptural work on the museum's
lobby wall. For years Fischer has reclaimed wooden floorboards from school
gymnasiums throughout the Midwest. In his project at the Hammer he created a
mural-like wall sculpture that existed as a labyrinth of roadways and paths of
intersecting floorboards that refer back to the notion of the American road trip
and an almost haphazard journey through nostalgia. Here Fischer presents a work
from this series, a wall sculpture that serves as a fragment of the larger
floorboard installations. In this work it is as if the artist has taken a snap
shot of a metaphorical roadmap as the work snakes down the wall into a corner
and onto the floor, ending mid-path. Further fragmenting familiar objects
Fischer presents two sculptures referencing a normative form, the boat. With one
work Fischer approaches the sculpture literally, fragmenting and reassembling a
once functioning boat that he has reworked multiple times over the years. Here
the artist quarters the boat, casts one portion of the work and reassembles
adding painted panes of glass around the perimeter that create an enclosure that
allow the viewer a glimpse of the interior. Fischer's second boat sculpture is
further abstracted and sits vertically composed of a semi-transparent skin made
of colored panes of glass and mirror.
Rob Fischer received his BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He
has had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New
York; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Cohan and Leslie, New York; Contemporary
Arts Forum, Santa Barbara; Franklin Art Works, Minneapolis; Max Wigram Gallery,
London; and Art in General, New York. His work has been included in numerous
exhibitions, including the 2004 Whitney Biennial; Greater New York, P.S.1
Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York; Open House: Working in
Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum of Art; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.;
Interval, Sculpture Center, Long Island City; Three Suitcases, Art and Idea,
Mexico City; and Sculpture on Site, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. He has
received, among other honors, the Bush Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship,
Minneapolis, a residency from Art in General, New York, and the Minnesota State
Arts Board Visual Arts Fellowship. He will be participating in the Chinati
Foundation residency program in Marfa, TX in 2011 as well as a commissioned
project by Los Angeles Nomadic Division.
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