Frederick Fisher: Thinking by Hand

Edward Cella Art + Architecture (ECAA) announced the Gallery's inaugural solo exhibition by renowned contemporary West-coast architect Frederick Fisher. Entitled Frederick Fisher: Thinking by Hand, this exhibition of new and recent watercolors explores the form making process and composition strategies Fisher employs when envisioning and creating proposals for a wide variety of potential architectural commissions.

Fisher's work, inspired by his 29 years of professional practice and his recent 2008 Fellowship at The American Academy in Rome, explores a variety of imagined public and private spaces through a series of elemental and geometric watercolors. Several important images in the series explore exciting and novel living and working spaces connecting art with nature.

Through other works in the series, Fisher reevaluates the traditional museum structure by conceptually investigating the recycling and transformation of abandoned office buildings and industrial facilities as potential museums, echoing the way palaces were repurposed in the 19th century and factories were reinhabited in the 20th century. As Fisher notes, "The museum has historically thrived in reclaimed spaces. The ongoing process of urban growth and decay presents a new inventory of potential museum sites."

The exhibition also evokes the architect's studio, informally mounting Fisher's small format watercolors with pushpins on the Gallery's walls. The exhibition underscores the architect's use of drawing and watercolor as a creative practice during the initial steps of understanding a new commission. Fisher states, "This work is the direct engagement of hand, eye, and thought with repeated and varied renditions of drawings and watercolors to find and refine my architectural ideas." The importance of form-making in the architect's practice was recently underscored by Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Hawthorne in connection with Fisher's recent work, "It is not simply the precision of [his] forms ... It is what those forms frame, acknowledge and make room for."

Fisher grew up in Cleveland, studied at Oberlin and UCLA and is the principal architect of the award winning design firm, Frederick Fisher and Partners, founded in 1980. His unique approach emphasizes the integration of various political, social and cultural issues of the 21st century while maintaining the integrity of space and architectural form. His distinctive merging of interior and exterior space and his disdain for ornamentation culminates in a poetic blend of serene yet purposeful architectural expressions.

Frederick Fisher's cultural projects include: The P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, the Long Beach Museum of Art, LA Louver Gallery, the Galef Center for Fine Arts at Otis, the Broad Arts Foundation, and the Erburu Gallery at Huntington Library. Fisher also has a career long history of collaborating with artists including Roy McMakin, Eric Orr, James Turrell and Jim Isermann.

In 2009 his designs for the new Annenberg Community Beach House at Santa Monica State Beach and a new academic building at Caltech were realized. Fisher was awarded the Brendan Gill Prize in 2001 by The Municipal Art Society as well as a number of AIA and Los Angeles Conservancy Awards. His work is held in prestigious institutions including The Berlinische Galerie, the Flint Institute of Art, The Huntington Library and the Heinz Architectural Center.

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