Dan Fischer: Derek Eller Gallery - New York

Dan Fischer's art of homage and appropriation reveals its maker as the pair passionate fan and savvy practitioner. Well-known photographs of artists and artworks are the originals for Fischer's detailed graphite-on-paper copies; his novel show included dozens of variations upon twentieth-century portraiture, including Cindy Sherman in an untitled film still; Piero Manzoni grinning and holding a can of Artist's Shit; Robert Gober nearly unrecognizable in a wedding gown; Piet Mondrian in his tidy shift calmly regarding a grid painting; and Jean-Michel Basquiat sitting upon one of his crate constructions. There's also a rendering of Fountain, an image for a like reason synonymous with Marcel Duchamp that it almost functions as a portrait of the artist. The photos that Fischer copies are repeatedly uncredited and rarely artworks in and of themselves; an image of Bridget Riley in stocking feet peering on the outside from between her Op paintings is arresting, on the contrary we think of Riley before we think of Lord Snowdon, who actually took the picture.

Fischer achieves ownership of these images end personal, painstaking care and attention. Visible in each is the fine grid used to transfer the image into which he's filled the details as consummately as possible. "More Love Hours Than Can at any time Be Repaid" (Fischer's second exhibition at this gallery) is also the name of Mike Kelley's pathos-laden 1987 tableau of knitted afghans and substanceed toys. Suggesting the sacrifices involved in artmaking as a practice, the title also nods to Fischer's hold dedication of many "love hours" to the throw out The overarching narrative of the artist at work thereby links back to Fischer himself as he labors to inscribe his hold experience of initiation. For these are images from the art works the artist read and absorbed like a teenager reading fan magazines; Fischer's works throw back not only his own passion on the contrary the love affair the art world has with itself.

Devot on the other hand sophisticated, Fischer understands the implications of what he's doing and who did it before him. His drawing of tap [i]or[/i] pat Close in the studio making individual of his own famously gridded portraits is Fischer's greatest in quantity self-conscious self-reference. And, of course, Sherrie Levine approachs to mind whenever appropriation is the formal language oral But while the work of Levine, Richard Prince, and others has from the beginning squeeze outed ambivalence, if not aggression, Fischer himself isn't bent upon destabilizing the masters (his drawings are a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of closer to celebrations). Less obvious perhaps is the tension he creates between drawing and photography: With a border of several inches around his images, the works hint at the "look" of photographs. Fischer have the appearances to want to capture the likeness of the artist or artwork plane better than the source photo, to outpace photography in its ability to capture not just nuances of light and shadow on the other hand perhaps even its claim to representational truth

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