Kerry Schuss Gallery

Press Release

K.S. Art presents an installation of new sculpture by New York-based artist, R.M. Fischer. This riot of art brut-inflected work fills the gallery floors, walls, and shelves with battalions of totemic contraptions, resembling folk-art accumulations installed in the workshop of an inspired tinker. In some cases Fischer has cannibalized, recycled and re-purposed fragments of his own earlier works of art--some of which even previously functioned as working lamps--to refashion brand new sculptures. These works incorporate the everyday materials and procedures into new configurations created out of the re-assembly process and by re-combining fragments of sculptural forms with crafted elements.

Fischer breathes new life into the tradition of assemblage, evoking the eternally playful and re-combinatory spirit of Schwitters, Rauschenberg and Tinguely, but also that of self-taught practitioners including Judith Scott and Lonnie Holley. This exhibition departs from the artist's sewn-and-stuffed volumes exhibited previously at K.S. Art in 2009. Here, Fischer unpacks an entirely new direction, drawing lines in space fashioned out of materials such as copper wire, threaded rod, and rubber hose, electrical and plumbing parts, steel cables, vinyl, thread, and fabric, but also including tattoo-like drawings, for example, on chipboard, Plexiglas and other surfaces.

This is R.M. Fischer's second one-person exhibition at KS Art. For the past twenty-five years, Fischer has been blurring the lines between art, architecture and design. R.M. Fischer has had over 32 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. 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.

Press