MORGAN FISHER at Maureen Paley
24 November — 25 January 2015
|
Lumière Alticolor Lumière du Jour 106 July 1956
archival pigment
print 40.6 x 50.8 cm 2014
|
Maureen Paley, London
2014
MORGAN FISHER
Past Present, Present Past
24 November 2014 – 25 January 2015
private
view: Monday 24 November 6:30 – 8:30pm |
Maureen Paley
is pleased to present the first solo exhibition by Morgan Fisher following on
from his screening at the gallery in 2013.
My father
taught me photography in 1955, when I was twelve years old. I made my first
movies (they were conventional home movies) with a Brownie 8mm camera in 1956.
I believed that photography and film as I found them in the 1950s would last
forever. All of the
works in this exhibition were made as photographs or films. I didn’t do this to
sustain my belief, it was the way I wanted to do things, and they were easy and
normal things to do. But in treating some of the works after their original
production I have chosen to work digitally because it is simpler.
Production Footage, shot on 16mm film in 1971,
documents two kinds of movie cameras and the models of production they imply,
both now obsolete since in principle film itself is. But true to its identity,
the work is presented here as projected film.
Red Boxing Gloves / Orange Kitchen Gloves was shot in 1980 in Polavision, an instant movie format that the
videocassette made obsolete. The work is in the form of a pendant pair, a
convention that arose in seventeenth-century Holland. The pendant pair consists
of two paintings with subjects that are complements of each other. In the
classic case one painting shows a husband and the other his wife. Together the
two figures make a larger whole. The two pairs of gloves express this same
relation in figurative if conventional terms. A few years ago I transferred the
films to DVDs; far simpler to show them in that form than as films. The
photographs of unused boxes of still film from the 1950s, shot recently,
express the pathos of how I thought about photography and film those many years
ago. Most of the manufacturers have disappeared or have stopped making film. At
the time these objects were made they carried the promise of future use. Now,
their expiration dates long past, they are useless, at least with respect to
their original purpose, their uselessness underlined by the fact that
photography on film as an amateur practice is essentially extinct. The
photographs were shot on film, a practice still current in commercial
photography, but scanned and then printed as archival pigment prints.
Morgan
Fisher, October 2014
Morgan Fisher
was born in 1942 in Washington, D.C. He studied art history at Harvard College
and then film in Los Angeles. He lives and works in Santa Monica, California.
Previous solo exhibitions include: Conversations,
Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, USA, 2012; The Frame and Beyond, Generali Foundation, Vienna,
Austria, 2012; Films and Paintings and In Between and Nearby, Raven
Row, London, 2011; Translations, Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach,
Germany, 2011; Portikus Looks at Itself, Portikus, Frankfurt,
Germany, 2009;Standard Gauge: Film Works by Morgan Fisher, 1968-2003,
Museum of Contemporary Art, MOCA, Los Angeles, California, USA, 2006; Whitney
Museum of American Art, New York, USA, 2006; Standard Gauge: The Films of Morgan Fisher, Tate
Modern, London, 2005. His work was included in the 2014, 2004 and 1985 Whitney
Biennials.
Solo publications include: Morgan Fisher. Conversations,
Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, 2014; Morgan Fisher: Exterior and Interior Color Beauty,
Bortolami Gallery, New York, 2013; Morgan Fisher. Two Exhibitions / Writings, Generali
Foundation, Vienna, Museum Abteiberg, Monchengladbach and Verlag der
Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, 2012; Films and Paintings and In Between and Nearby, Raven
Row, London, 2011.