Text by Rudi Fuchs, 2018
Alex Fischer makes these frottages from drain covers, just because they are there.
I have nothing else to say right at this moment. They are there for technical reasons,
yet they’re not particularly beautiful. They seem less attractive than waterlilies,
which in the nineteenth century were often painted for their beauty.
It is a bit of a paradox how the stiffly formed dark green waterlily leaves float on still water.
Not to mention their flowers, which open quite serenely. There were periods in art, in the Romantic Age,
when secrets were considered alluring. The flat leaf of the waterlily floats because it is wide and light.
Shimmery green like an ornament, it appears to float even lighter. Usually the water is darker,
especially when deep. This depth seems unfathomable. Such mystery was deemed beautiful.
Just like the sharp, black silhouettes of trees grown askew against a moonlit winter’s night with snow
covering the ground. That was beauty back then, captured in a painting by Caspar David Friedrich.
Alex Fischer is an artist who grew up in the artistic environment of Minimal Art.
Like his contemporaries, he is accustomed to observing commonplace reality in a divergent, lucid manner.
Perhaps seeing waterlilies on black water fills him with the same romantic wistfulness as I feel.
Water pipelines and sewage systems are installed underground throughout the built up,
industrial world. That way they won’t obstruct ground level traffic. Drains have been built
so that maintenance crews can enter the pipe system. As a rule, drains are covered with iron covers.
Nowadays we see these covers in the pavement everywhere –although we hardly ever notice them,
as they’re never supposed to stand out. Their arrangements are practical and are inconspicuous all
over the world. A specific type of iron is mainly used in the actual covers and surrounding framework.
With time and under the influence of local weather circumstances, each drain cover will become so
weather-beaten that the metal colour, mass and surface will align with the rest of the pavement.
Yet artists see further and keener. Alex Fischer saw that wherever you looked, drain covers lay
everywhere. That began to intrigue him, and he could also imagine what was happening underground.
He perceived drain covers in the matter-of-fact way that was typical of Minimal Art.
He watched, just as Niele Toroni did when busy applying paint with a nr 50 brush.
That’s a flat brush with a width of 50 mm. Within the parameters of a blank surface,
Toroni arranged paint daubs in a regular pattern with a 30 cm space between each daub.
The painting, as Toroni called it (as he did want to be a painter), was a recurrent sequence
of uniformly coloured daubs that ceased once the surface was filled up.
It was a form of painting without passion.
With their regular spaces, exactly 52 daubs fit onto a 2 x 2m canvas.
That is the whole painting, bare bones and all. Nothing more.
It seems like a conceptual image, yet that is a misperception.
Toroni wanted to make paintings by hand and in as simple a way as possible.
Envisioning a painting didn’t interest him.
A painting would begin with the first daub of paint in one primary colour.
If you went beyond that, you’d end up in the confusion of so-called inspiration.
He reckoned that you completely lose perspective at that point because decisions become arbitrary.
Imagine: your first paint daub is one with green paint. Then the second – should it be green too?
And should the next daub be placed neatly next to the first one – or slightly longer or thicker or straight
across it? Should other colours be added? Yellow or brown or red? What are you painting then?
Perhaps a tree. But what kind of tree then? One between other trees in a forest or one tree standing
majestically alone in a field? Is it a chestnut or maybe a German oak? Yet that’s hardier and heavier.
A chestnut tree spreads its branches out wide and their branches tend to hang.
The crown of leaves of an oak have a different type of colour green than that of a full chestnut.
The green of a chestnut is dark. All I mean is: when you start with just one green brushstroke,
confusion reigns. Doubt manifolds when you start painting in yellow or red.
That’s how Toroni came up with the practical idea of keeping to one colour, e.g. yellow,
per painting and arrange each paint daub in a regular and clear pattern across the canvas.
That was the simplest. There I stand before the 52 yellowemptreintes de pinceau
–and what I see is a wonderful, incalculable suggestion of space.
I see the arrangement of yellow daubs next to and above each other as a wave of movement.
There is no center, movement goes in all directions. The open sides of the linen canvas,
two by two meters, don’t work as demarcation. They don’t hold back the daubs of yellow paint.
They are also not drawn into a center which is not there. The yellow painting is just a square fragment
of a movement of yellow paint daubs, as regular as calm waves. The end is not in sight.
Moreover, the impression of infinity also applies to Toroni’s works which have just a few
coloured daubs on paper. One ten -centimeter straight line is as much a fragment
of an endless line as one of ten meters or ten kilometers.
Stanley Brouwn knew that, he occupied himself with spatial art, with actual mass and scale,
just as Toroni gave clarity to simplicity in painting.
In the context of Minimal Art, which is inexhaustible, impenetrable and practical, there have arisen
many new forms of freedoms in art creation. Together with the development of innovative ways
to envisage the world. Young people’s imaginations are becoming more sober,
business-like and factual. What was once unimaginable eventually becomes imaginable.
There is Alex Fischer for example, who discovered drain covers after he tired of carving wood.
They lie everywhere in cities all over the world but who looks at them?
Maybe pedestrians notice them. They are flat and unobtrusive, so as not to distract traffic.
I have no idea how Alex Fischer ended up with drain covers as a motif for art.
Why did Van Gogh paint sunflowers instead of tulips? The answer is: because he is an artist
and artists see things and connections that others miss. Plus, artists are tough and tenacious.
Later, when the sunflowers were painted and we all came to know Van Gogh’s cornfields,
that explosive yellow impressed upon aficionados how much van Gogh loved lewd colour.
In that respect sunflowers have more impact than tulips.
Alex Fischer decided to make this frottage documentary of drain covers. They are factual.
Let’s say at the academy in Hamburg he noticed the size works of Stanley Brouwn,
who was a professor there. He was deeply moved by the finesse of these enigmatic constructions.
These things made him stop and think. Meanwhile he made works with wood which kept him
constantly thinking up new shapes. That bored him. He walked onto the street and looked around.
I think that the drain covers were a sudden and inexplicable revelation. The young sculptor clearly saw
how the wrought iron surface was made up of the relief work’s contours and ridges.
The drain covers had that specific iron profile, otherwise they would be too slippery for passing traffic.
Yet with pen or pastel you could rub an impression on to paper by placing it over the relief and pressing.
It appeared like a conjured image when graphite stripes were rubbed back and forth across the paper.
It was child’s play. I recall the excitement we had as children when making these pictures.
And now Alex Fischer was paving the way with such frottages. But the resolute artist continually
wanted to make something novel and not repeat the same work. That took him across the world.
As is wont of Minimal Art, it was practical to systemize production.
He used square pieces of 100 x 100 cm, 200 gr paper from the classic Fabriano brand.
The graphite is Faber Castell 9B. He bound together two cylinders with broad Gaffer tape and used
these to handily carry about his equipment. One cylinder for finished frottages and one cylinder for
unused sheets of paper. He travels around like an explorer, as light on his feet as Richard Long,
on the lookout for drain covers he has not yet discovered. This ritual is important because that is
how this endearing artistic engagement gains such aesthetic gravitas. He pays close attention to all
that is everywhere and familiar on the street. He sees curious differences. That is what art is about.
The drain covers are almost always round. They fit into a predominantly square framework.
The configuration in their iron relief follows an ornamental motif that begins in the middle or runs along
the edge of the framework from where it curls inwards. There is also text in relief on a drain cover.
The name of a city for example, or the manufacturer’s name. Sometimes we see an elegant interlace
between ornamental design and text typography. They are insignificant things, these lids,
yet they are made to look good. They are made locally. Even the design style is local.
It’s delightful that in Tokyo and New York they look different than in Rio de Janeiro.
It is wonderful to see that. How the world becomes richer in imagination.
What really fascinates me is that all the frottages are made by hand. I admire the tenacity of this work.
If they had been photographed, they’d just be ordinary pictures. By manually rubbing pencil on paper
over the relief, a strangely flecked and greyish black-white image emerges. Traces can be seen
of the nervous pressure of a hand which has rubbed the paper to reveal the relief underneath.
These frottages move. In Toroni’s yellow painting you see that every brush stroke is slightly different.
That’s due primarily to the light pressure on the brush and the linen, and when the brush is withdrawn
from wet paint. The traces of minimal differences are clear when you look carefully.
Sometimes the painting vibrates or the yellow starts shimmering. You may also look at frottages
in this way. You can look for a long time and try to see what lies under drain covers.
Everyone must decide that for themselves –e.g. how fathomless the pit may be.
Rudi Fuchs