joel fisher - apographs

                                                                                                    curated by dominic rich

 

          reception Tuesday 9 June 6-9pm

Centre for Recent Drawing (C4RD) presents Joel Fisher’s Apographs. C4RD has a provisional definition with which makers and thinkers can engage: drawing as the exercise of imagination on line. This allows us to consider how we may envisage lines on and off the page. We can consider all the sorts of lines we create in our minds as types of drawing. In constellating stars or looking into our family tree we exercise imagination on line as a process of deriving meaning. Simultaneously in space and time, we draw connections between the objects we notice in the world. We create lines between objects.

 

Joel Fisher pulls apart; he disrupts this viewer - object relationship, through his Apographs. Apograph, a Greek word meaning copy or transcript is the term Fisher adopted for this artistic enquiry, developed over four decades, which hinges on a process of copying. However, Fisher does not draw from three dimensions to two dimensions as in observational drawing; he does the reverse. He creates images as if from nothing and sculptures from those images. He journeys from one to three and possibly, four dimensions.

 

Fisher starts by hand-making paper, a seemingly blank sheet. An image of ‘nothing’ emerges from the bucket of water, breaking its surface. A once chaotic blend of fibres are united into one plane - one sheet - one dimension. When dried on felt fabric the paper absorbs felt fibres, which appear as small peculiarities embedded in the paper's surface. In noticing these fibres, a basic departure from ‘nothing’ has been created puncturing any illusion of blankness. Fisher then pencils the fibres’ composition to a larger scale on the same sheet of paper. Both depiction and depicted become present on the one page. These fibres inspire lines with deliberate significance. Fisher then imagines how they could be sculpted into three dimensions and works towards this end. Fisher ends up with a sculpture that only has one angle of correspondence with the original fibre. The sculpture (the copy of a copy) claims greater presence than its origin, appearing itself to be the origin and the drawn line a copy. The authority of origin is made uncertain.

 

Such notions make the Apographs significant to line making. The Apographs’ process forces us to imagine connecting lines of ‘progress’ or change. However the Apographs themselves force us to make our own references linking them to the cultural seams of our inclination. This allows us to consider the viewer’s interpretation as a more inductive than deductive process; histories distinct from the Apographs’ making may be invented and applied to their meaning. Thought ultimately can be seen as the process of connecting invisible lines. It also highlights the uncertainty and instability of identity or origin in the viewer – object relationship. Origin and identity make us think of time: the past, the present and the future. Fisher’s Apographs problematise this fourth dimension. Are the Apograph papers and sculptures causal points on their own space-time lines?

 

This exhibition coincides with the publication of the second volume of our Documents for Recent Drawing series: Joel Fisher - Apographs featuring photographs of the work and a text by Dominic Rich (ISBN 978-1-907226-01-4). The Documents for Recent Drawing series is available to ordered through booksellers or via the internet throuigh Amazon.co.uk. 

Please join us for the opening reception for this exhibition 6 - 9pm Tuesday 9 June 2009 or during the exhibition 10 June – 31 July 2009. Centre for Recent Drawing is open for this exhibition at 12 - 6pm between Wednesday and Saturday at 2 - 4 Highbury Station Road, Highbury Islington, London. C4RD is a Registered UK Charity 1123530, and would particularly like to acknowledge the support for this exhibition of the Arts Council and ARTUPDATE.COM/ for this project.

Centre for Recent Drawing

2-4 Highbury Station Road LONDON N1 1SB  

Wed-Sat 12-6  (Highbury/Islington tube/rail)

  www.c4rd.org.uk  +44 (0) 20 32396936

Registered Charity No. 1123530

 

"Nice opening

great show

brilliant curator

what more can one say?"

— Paul Martin