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		Metropolis Development presents Roland Fischer September 7, 2006 Metropolis Development Company, LLC., presents Roland Fischer Facades Metropolis Development Company in association with G Fine Art is proud to present an installation of works by German photographer Roland Fischer in its sales center at the corner of 14th and Church Streets in the Greater 14th Street Historic District. Culled from a larger body of work the photographic prints on display will feature facades from structures in the greater Washington metropolitan area. Metropolis commitment to building neighborhoods by design will be underscored with the focus of these pieces on the artful quality inherent in fine architecture. "A principal figure in the contemporary German photography movement, Roland Fischer's imagistic aesthetic evolved from his foundation as a conceptual portrait artist. Earlier bodies of work include a tonal series of monks and nuns and his LA portraits of women immersed to bust level in monochrome pools. He uses the same formal approach and illuminating insight in his recent large-format photographs of skyscraper façades. In these, he merges the detached psychology of direct portraiture with the abstract possibilities of painting, creating a unifying conceptual underpinning. Rooted in the formalism of new German photography, Fischer's façades reveal a preoccupation with the visual hallmarks of early modernist abstract painting, such as structure, color, rhythm, reductive shapes, geometry and surface effect. He translates these painterly concerns through the language of photography by shooting his subjects frontally and cropping them tightly into architectural fragments. Fischer strips the buildings from any urban context and denies them their mass, ultimately rendering them into decorative visual fields. Fischer controls any distortions through digital means and prints in large format, deliberately alluding to large abstract paintings, but keeps the slick photographic surface. And yet we recognize that these are building facades, structural membranes that function like skin, keeping interior private realms separate from the outer public world. On the one hand, these facades are frontal portraits of nameless buildings, each a member of a vast corporate culture. Pursuing this path of anonymous portraiture, Fischer leaves his photographs untitled, adding only the city name as documentary residue. On the other hand the facades are lush visual fragments that, like a theoretical hologram, contain a greater aesthetic whole. In our accelerated culture that glorifies quick and compressed communication such as soundbytes, logos, and synopses, the fragment may ultimately prove the most revealing." For further information contact Annie Gawlak or Paul Vinet. Annie Gawlak, Director, annie@gfineartdc.com > return to news listing