Rob Fischer: A Bird Song

ENGAGE Projects is excited to announce A Bird Song, our upcoming solo exhibition by Rob Fischer. Working in the areas of sculpture and installation, Fischer patches together bits of debris, mending discarded material from America’s industrial past into shed-like structures. Much like a bird’s nest, his structures emit an essence of home; evidence of the comings and goings of daily life, the residue of repurposed materials, a makeshift place of rest conjured by a will to live and a sense of belonging. With a history of transplanting his industrial sculptures into natural environments and gallery spaces, Fischer recontextualizes the overlooked waste of decades past into something intimately familiar yet unknown, a feeling much like walking into another’s home.

A Bird Song, whose title comes from Victorian era poet Christina Rosetti, speaks of longing for companionship through life’s obstacles, longing for a shared home to return to: “Oh happy swallow whose mate will follow / O’er height, o’er hollow! I’d be a swallow, / To build this weather one nest together.” Both a song of persistent survival and a song of kinship, Fischer’s exhibition creates a nesting place for that which could be.

Fischer graduated with a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1993 and has exhibited work at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York; Derek Eller Gallery, New York; Dee/Glasoe Gallery, New York, among numerous others. Fischer’s work has also been exhibited internationally in Seoul, Korea, London, Mexico City, and Vienna, Austria. He has participated in the 2004 Whitney Biennial and has received many awards such as the Jerome Foundation Fellowship, the Bush Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship, and was the inaugural recipient of the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Art Prize.

Image: Rob Fischer, Untitled (Glass House), 2011, steel and glass, Marfa, TX Chinati Foundation