OLD DOGS, NEW TRICKS

recent work by: R.M. Fischer, Hermine Ford, John Newman

“Old Dogs, New Tricks“ presents recent works signaling new directions by three veteran New York City-based artists, R.M. Fischer, Hermine Ford and John Newman. Deploying the art of unexpected juxtaposition in a changing line-up of materials, processes and sources, all three artists create surprising new forms through additive construction procedures. These new works turn on its head the popular misconception that innovation and deviation from rules or forms is limited to youthful preoccupation.

These amalgamations of the heteroclite – these deviations from the common forms – obtain three-dimensional expression in John Newman’s hard and in R.M. Fischer’s otherwise soft sculpture and two dimensions in Hermine Ford’s small meticulously patterned paintings.

This is the first exhibition of R.M. Fischer’s new soft sculptures. These large-scaled works fashioned from hand-sewn forms of printed vinyl and upholstery fabric then filled with polyester fiber conjure up an eccentric mix of non-western tribal art and lowbrow popular culture.

Hermine Ford’s oil on linen paintings collect and re-figure shards of diverse historical reference, including architectural pattern and tile design. By adding fragments of fragments of fragments to the artist’s multiplying archeology of forms. Ford’s new combinations summon a new found alphabet of lost dreams.

John Newman also draws on a jarring diversity of considered and crafted components both found and fabricated. Bronze, wicker, stone, paper glass and rope are made into surprising combinations of materials and forms, adding up to unforeseen sequences marking the infinitude of difference.