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COHAN AND LESLIE present an exhibition of new work by New York-based artist Rob Fischer. This will be Fischer’s first one-person show at the gallery. 18 February - 26 March 2005. The exhibition is comprised of an installation of sculptures, painted photographs, and paintings. - Primarily known for the construction of transport vehicles, including boats, airplane parts, flatbed trucks, and dumpsters, Fischer’s sculptures are hybrids; amalgamations of parts that have seemingly discordant functions. Taken from past works of art, or excavated from his studio and adjacent yard, each reassembled work references the artist’s day-to-day life and studio practice. By addressing spaces outside the gallery location, the privacy of the studio is made public.
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Greenhouse No. 4 2004-05 & Altar, 2005
In a series of architectural structures on view here, Fischer creates interiors from other interiors, and makes “the outside” suddenly containable. The show will include a greenhouse, a glass structure filled with moss transplanted from the artist’s yard, a patch of swamp that he has been growing and documenting since he moved to New York several years ago. Also included is Summary (Goodyear Ecology), a tire track cut across Fischer’s yard accidentally, which has been excavated whole and installed in a metal tray. “Altar”, made of steel and mirror, is a fabricated dumpster (an old sculpture) turned up on its end. In addition Fischer has constructed a series of rooms and corridors. While seemingly large in scale and accommodating to human interaction, these spaces are too narrow and confining for real habitation or dwelling. Each structure is connected to the next by a system of water pipes, which serves to further complicate the space visually and psychologically, often encumbering the viewer by forcing him to step over or crawl under the spaces as he moves through the exhibition. There is a discomfort and anxiety experienced by the viewer, who can climb through the warren of rooms, creating a palpable tension between this unease and the imaginary comforts of “home”.
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Fischer’s project addresses and explores the tension between transience and memory and the specifics of site. Made of industrial materials like steel and glass, the sculptures remain at once utilitarian and intensely personal. They help elucidate the human relationship to space, place, and origin and explore our desire to escape yet root ourselves to an exact place. In fact the installation will be largely reconstructed and modified on site, a practice that reflects the ever-changing, recyclable nature of Fischer’s work.
The photographs on view, painted C-prints shot by the artist from his car while driving through his native Minnesota, are images of abandoned trailers on fire from various viewpoints. This creates a cinematic yet disorienting effect when viewed from one to the other. The trailer, an American icon of a culture that is historically characterized by the desire to migrate and discover, is seen in an indefinable state – partly present, partly destroyed. It is an example of the struggles and failures of architecture, but marks the triumph of the wandering American renegade.
Unity Road No. 5, 2004-05
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