Morgan Fisher

Artist and filmmaker Morgan Fisher is known for his highly conceptual approach, creating rigorously structured works that attempt to eliminate traces of personal expression, instead relying on pre-resisting structures as the basis for his compositions. After attending film school in the 1960s, Fisher worked as a commercial film editor, and his short experimental films often draw upon the behind-the-scenes aspects of filmmaking, such as the editing and storyboarding processes. In what is perhaps his best known film, Standard Gauge, [YEAR TK], a 35 minute long film shot in 16mm, Fisher drew on his career as a film editor, displaying rejected scraps of various films, treating them as both material and medium as a means of addressing the film industry. In the 1990s, Fisher began to expand his practice into painting, drawing, and installations. His paintings are typically radically simplified abstract canvases, often based on the architecture and proportions of particular spaces. More recently, he has also created works that address the obsolescence of film, as in a series of photographs depicting boxes of expired film from the 1950s, the decade in which Fisher began taking photographs.  

Fisher's work has been the subject of solo shows at institutions including the Aspen Museum, the Generali Foundation in Vienna, and MoMA PS1. In 2005-2006, a retrospective of his films, Standard Gauge: Film Works by Morgan Fisher, 1968-2003, was held at the Whitney Museum and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Fisher was also selected for the 1985, 2004, and 2014 Whitney Biennials.