Anne Fischer: Visit to an Extinct City

On November 3, R & Company will open a solo exhibition of new rings by artist Anne Fischer, inspired by her travels with poet Teresa Carson to the extinct ancient city of Ostia Antica, Italy, and Carson’s resulting five-book poetry project, specifically her first book, Visit to an Extinct City, from which Fischer’s exhibition takes its name.

Fischer’s practice of making rings in precious metals is distinguished by her particular attention to minute details and ability to incorporate poetic text at a very small scale. In her upcoming exhibition, Visit to An Extinct City, Fischer also delves into the formal qualities and possibilities of plaster, which she uses to produce a spectrum of small sculptural objects that suggest the landscape of an excavated city and are the foundation for her new cast-metal rings. The rings, in turn, are presented as an elaborate assemblage of independent parts echoing fragments in an open field.

Visit to An Extinct City will feature 58 small-scale plaster sculptures, measuring approximately 1 inch in diameter, as well as a selection of 27 rings created from them. The collection of plasters and rings is distinguished by the incorporation of fresco-like colors, poetic texts that represent different places and moments in time, and etched lines and blank spaces referencing the landscape of the excavated city. Elements of the uncanny emptiness that Fischer experienced in Ostia Antica emerge through a spectrum of techniques and visual elements across the objects in the exhibition. Each work offers an echo of Ostia Antica and the broader conceptual questions the trip inspired. The works will be further accentuated by the Tourist Guide, an artist book developed in collaboration with designer Julien Fischer, that includes Fischer’s selection of fragmentary texts by poets and playwrights that together suggest a path through the hidden landscape created within the exhibition. These texts are carved on many of the plasters and on all of the rings.

The installation design for Visit to An Extinct City is being created in collaboration with interior architect Ken Foreman. The exhibition will remain on view at R & Company’s White Street location through January 5, 2024.

WORKS ON VIEW

—Exhibition Programming—

Scholars’ Talk
Tuesday, December 12, 6:30–8 PM
Classicists Emily Salamanca and Charles Ro on how the miniaturization of texts on the works in the exhibit relates both to the miniaturization of texts in ancient Rome and to the way in which miniaturization concentrates the experiences of city life.
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Wall color for this exhibition was generously provided by Alkemis Paint, the world’s first architectural wellness paint.