Rob Fischer, whose background is in sculpture, has been building domestic structures since college and often moves them from one remote rural landscape to another, exploring the seemingly opposing ideas of protection and adventure. While clearly not architecture, the temporarily inhabitable spaces have a dioramic quality, sometimes containing elements that hint at occupation, like a bed or stove. “I’ve always liked when modernist sculptors started using string and glass and plexiglass,” he says, citing Constructivist sculptor Antoine Pevsner and his brother Naum Gabo as sources of inspiration. Fischer uses scrap materials to build walls, floors, roofs, and windows, creating collaged volumes that give the structures the air of having histories. He dragged Mirrored House (Disappearing House) in the Woods to various locations (once towing it out on a lake), where it makes a kind of shimmering mirage—the surrounding landscape becomes inherent to its meaning. This itinerancy, and the rough-and-ready construction, evoke Brooklyn-based Fischer’s roots in the Midwest (he still spends summers there, at a house in Minnesota) and its spirit of self-reliance and making do with what’s available. Recently, Fischer’s Good Weather (Glass House) was on view at Derek Eller Gallery in Manhattan. The welded steel frame is fitted with mostly tempered glass that the artist painted with screen-printing ink. “I wanted to make a sculpture that was, at least on the surface level, really joyous and beautiful,” says Fischer.
Rob Fischer
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Mirrored House (Disappearing House) in the Woods
Photo © Rob Fischer
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Good Weather (Glass House)
Photo © Adam Reich, courtesy of the artist and Derek Eller Gallery
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Good Weather (Glass House)
Photo © Adam Reich, courtesy of the artist and Derek Eller Gallery
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This summer, Fischer is working on a project similar to Good Weather, for Omi International Arts Center in Ghent, New York, a residency program for visual artists, writers, musicians, and dancers. It will be installed on footings in the middle of pond at Omi and will be used by artists for short stays of a night or two. 'We will probably install this winter when the pond is frozen and we can get out to set helical piles through the ice. The pond is in the middle of the sculpture park and is mostly hidden by marsh and woods, so it feels quite secluded,' says Fischer.
Photo © Rob Fischer
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The Classical Elements (House Made of Cessna, Trailer House, Greenhouse, Boat)
Photo © Rob Fischer
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Mirrored House on Water, 1999
Photo © Rob Fischer
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Fischer spends summers at a house and studio in Minnesota, where he designed the trusses shown here (he started them at the same time as Glass House). 'I love being able to spend the summer here working on sculpture on a scale I really can't do in New York,' writes Fischer.
Photo © Rob Fischer