Kerry Schuss Gallery

Press Release

KS Art presents recent sculpture by R.M. Fischer announcing a distinctive, fresh direction for the New York based artist. Breaking with the functionalism of his earlier industrial assemblages and public sculpture, Fischer's new combinations of soft and hard forms evoke softly armored figures. Organic shapes crafted out of colorful vinyl, felt, and upholstery and sewn together with thread to suggest body parts. These seemingly upbeat, cartoon-inspired figures are tattooed, pierced, and adorned with metal amulets. The large, stuffed fetish-like appendages are a new invention of Fischer's familiar, machine-like constructions crafted out of steel, aluminum and brass. Fischer's combination of the soft and the hard elements create a replicating army of fleshy machines suggestive of what William S. Burroughs called the human body: namely, "the soft machine".

Fischer replaces utilitarian functionality with a Pop palette and playful figures and forms. The inclusion of orifices, tongues and other fetishes pushes the toy-like sensibility to a polymorphous perversity. This turn of the screw, at once mischievous and more menacing, explores the dark mechanics of popular culture and its sexual underbelly.

This is R.M. Fischer's first one-person exhibition at KS Art. For the past twenty-five years, Fischer has been blurring the lines between art, architecture and design. Fischer is acclaimed for his monumental site-specific public art commissions. The public sculptures, "Rector Gate" and "Battery Tunnel Clock" can be seen in lower-Manhattan. His most notable public work is the Kansas City "Sky Stations" which crowns the convention center and shapes the skyline of city. R.M. Fischer has had over 30 solo exhibitions, including an exhibition at the Whitney Museum in 1984. His work is included numerous public collections including, The Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Art Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Carnegie Museum of Fine Art and the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts.