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30/6/2008

Dan Fischer

Alison Jacques Gallery, London

(Eliza Williams is a writer and critic for Frieze, Flash Art, Art Monthly and Creative Review). "I try to reproduce the excitement of a special moment or location in art history, and to celebrate the role of artists as myth, or as icon."

The artist in conversation with Robert Hobbs, published in Dan Fischer catalogue, 2006. Alison Jacques Gallery is pleased to announce the first European exhibition of the American artist Dan Fischer. Fischer's meticulous pencil drawings are based on photocopies of photographs of seminal artist's images from the mid-twentieth century to the present day - a practice he terms 'Xerox realism'. Using a mechanical pencil and soft erasers Fischer works his surfaces until he achieves a near perfect velveteen richness akin to that generated in the photocopying process.

While enrolled at Alfred University, New York, Fischer was instructed to make raster-type drawings that emulate the scanning patterns of parallel lines typically displayed on early black-and-white television screens. Fischer subsequently used a Polaroid taken of himself and transformed it into the equivalent of a video image, using two parallel but slightly spaced apart pieces of paper to isolate narrow sections of the photograph and mimic the technological look of raster lines. Fischer's first artist subject was one of Hans Namuth's famous photographs of Jackson Pollock standing in front of one of his drip paintings. The artist soon began employing grids, which he finally came to favour over the raster-line format. Working with the grid allows Fischer to view his favourite images as a series of abstract passages and to approach the drawing process in a very mechanical manner.

The artist's engagement with mediated imagery continues a line of enquiry made prominent in the late 1970s by Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine and the other "Pictures" group artists. Fischer is drawn to images that allude to the notion of covering up or obscurification; masks or facial distortions often feature in his chosen images. In this way the subjects in these particular drawings repeat the trope of layering and accumulation that is enacted through Fischer's use of photographs, photocopies, and finally, graphite.

Dan Fischer was born in Brooklyn (1977) and currently lives and works in Bay Shore, NY. He graduated with a BA in Fine Art from the School of Art and Design, Alfred University (1999). Dan Fischer has been included in numerous museum exhibitions including: Two Years, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY (2008); UBS Young Art, g27, Zurich (2007); On Line: Contemporary Drawing, University Art Gallery, Sonoma State University, CA (2006); Art on Paper 2004, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro (2004); Process and Possibility: Contemporary Drawings at the MFAH, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2003). In 2006, Fischer was the North American recipient of the UBS Art Scholarship. Dan Fischer's work is included in major international collections including Tate, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; The Menil Collection, Houston and The Whitney Museum, New York.

opening Tuesday 1 July, 6-8pm

Alison Jacques Gallery
16-18 Berners Street - London

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