Dodgeball

New York–based multidisciplinary artist Rob Fischer salvages materials from abandoned buildings and junkyards, reconfiguring them into large-scale sculptural environments that weave past histories into the present. In Dodgeball, Fischer translated this practice into printmaking by using assembled sections of reclaimed oak flooring as his printing matrix. By inking and printing from the cracks, seams, and scratches in the floorboards, Fischer drew on communal memories of school days. Patches of screenprinted color hint at fragmented lines found on gymnasium floors, recalling the once ubiquitous game of dodgeball, which struck fear into the hearts of generations of schoolchildren. Fischer says of his work, “These pieces are abstracted from the larger and in their simplicity are able to sum up the essence of the larger.”