Generali Foundation Vienna, 2. March – 29. July 2012
Morgan Fisher has spent most of his life working for the film industry in technical positions – editing and processing films. At the same time while working, he developed a love for the physical medium of film and his personal artwork is based around this topic. The medium of film, its format, framing, etc, serve as a line of inspiration throughout his life. The exhibition is a retrospective, covering decades of work. On one hand, the body of work that Fisher produced is not very large. I attribute this partially to the fact that he spent a lot of time doing actual money work in film industry jobs. On the other hand, the smaller scope allowed him to be more focused. The work spreads across different media, from drawings, over paintings, to films. Seen separately, the work in each of he media could be seen as referencing a different source of inspiration, but in the exhibition the pieces of the puzzle come together.
Next to the entrance there are two rooms with a number of rectangular monochrome paintings illuminated with UV lights, creating a very smooth and radiant feel. I believe the idea behind is related to complementary colors and the technical process used to create color films. Then there are abstract grey double-sided paintings, and grey relief structures painted in grey as well. These works do not reference film, but an outline created by an arrangement of books. A number of projections in the show reference the process of physical film production itself, showing the medium in the medium. Showing these films as original 16mm projections is a good decision. Another work consists of mirrors cut out in industry standard movie aspect ratios. Simple, but fitting in the context of other Fisher’s works, giving a space to ‘reflect’ on the meaning an aspect ratio has in the presentation of a movie and how this aspect of the presentation format comes about.
My favorite work from the show is “Color Balance” (1980). A black and white slow motion shot of a ping pong ball balancing on an air flow has been printed identically on three color films in red, green and blue. The three videos are projected simultaneously from three 16mm film projectors, not synchronized. The physical presence of the film medium, coupled with the presentation of the color mixing process itself and the random movement of the ball are astounding. It is a very simple and formalist work, but it points towards the nature of the film medium and the technology used. This approach is common to other film works in the show, but it is usually achieved in a way that is closer to ‘illustration’ – showing the process and a voiceover or text title explanation, which creates a connection to popular science videos. In “Color Balance” Fisher managed to do something similar without a didactic feel. While it is a time-based work, it is not as time-dependent as a linear narrative structure.