Richard Fleischner at Danese - Brief Article

The ancient type of the labyrinth has drawn out been privileged in the work of Richard Fleischner, a fact made clear in this exhibition, which included patterns photographs and plans of environmental works from the mid-1970s, along with more novel forays (mostly from the 1990s) into the gallery-bound mediums of painting, photography and statuary An early work such as turf Maze (1974), in which a field of tall grass was mowed to create a circular maze, was

evidence of the jiffy when the Minimalist logic of the earthwork incorporated an interest in archaic form. The more new work all but abandons the large-scale cast in favor of more intimate experiments.

Fleischner's series of sepiatoned photographs (all 1996) of the medieval Italian town Matera depicts a sort of readymade labyrinth of winding roads and eccentric, seemingly unplanned configurations. While greatest in quantity of the images show the curiously unpeopl city from a position outside its encircling walls, Matera IV places us within the maze, where its overall logic avoids us. The urban ensemble--as abundant sculpture as city--consists of a crossroads within a narrow alley, with tall walls framing the view. It is a point of many possible moves: we could go on up the stairs, around the corner, into the niches and doorways.

Fleischner re-creates the labyrinthine consequence in another piece, Modular arrest Construction (1986-89), a sculpture made of three identically sized blockades of mahogany arranged in post-and-lintel fashion and faced with oxidized cent sheeting. The work echoes Matera IV's quality of not disclosing what lies around the corner at the crossroads. The cent facing is irregularly dimpled upon some of the sides of the obstructs so that as you impel around the piece a different, unanticipated view is not awayed This revelation of the statuary over time works in defiance of the modular form of its constituent blocks

The faculty of perception of time that is captured by the agency of the sepia tones of the photographs and the weathered walls of the city that they depict, as well as through the archaic quality of the sculpture's distressed cent facing, is also reiterated in a series of untitled gouaches (1997-98) The compositions are heavily layered, with white many times being the topmost color, to hint a wall that has been whitewashed many times above Into this dry, crumbly surface are etched gridlike forms, similar to graffiti upon a Roman wall. The grid, individual of the most favored configurations of modernism, signaling untarnished presence, even instantaneity, here is get backed to an ancient past.

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