Rob Fischer
Good Weather
March 21 - April 19, 2014
Opening Reception: Friday, March 21, 6-8pm
Derek Eller Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of sculpture by Rob Fischer.
The centerpiece of this exhibition is a large-scale house comprised of panes of glass, welded steel, and re-purposed wood flooring. The piece contains many of the furnishings of a functional domicile but remains ambiguous about its habitability. Extensively re-configured and evolved from its original manifestation at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX, Fischer's Good Weather (Glass House) vacillates between utilitarian architecture and fine art object, reconstituting industrial-strength detritus with the outward appearance of fragile elegance.
Fischer divides his time between two studios, one in the woods of Northern Minnesota and one in Brooklyn. He constructs carefully organized sculptural installations from banal and often derelict materials which he then deconstructs back to their original state. He purposefully initiates the process again with each new sculptural iteration (e.g. Good Weather (Glass House) evolved from Marfa to the gallery). As such, Fischer's process emulates the natural world, with a constant cycle of birth, aging, death and re-birth. Writer and artist Rubin Nusz writes that Fischer's "ever-evolving works prompt the question: What is the true, original source of any material? In the case of the floorboards, is the wood itself the fundamental substrate? Or should you look more deeply, to the cells that give substance to the wood, or to the sunlight that fuels cell growth?"
Incorporating flat strokes of saturated colors on geometric panes reminiscent of Mondrian, elevating everyday materials a la Arte Povera, and constructing a form in clear dialogue with minimalist architecture and Land Art, Fischer's sculpture seamlessly combines these disparate aspects of Modernism into a singular experience.
Rob Fischer (b. 1968) has had solo museum exhibitions at The Armand Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York, NY; and Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, CA. His work has been featured in group exhibitons at PS1 MoMA, New York, NY; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Essl Museum, Vienna, Austria; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. This will be his first exhibition with the gallery.
