Joel Fisher
Three Aspects of Line Investigation

Joel Fisher’s works were exhibited on three walls of the workshop. Delineation consisted of unpressed, hand-made paper mounted directly on the wall. Signs, ten “superfluous drawings,” were “hand drawn confirmations of the shapes of small hairs on the surface of the paper. The shape of the original hair (which stuck to the paper from the felt where the paper lay to dry) is entirely accidental; the drawing is an attempt to see, reinforce, and free this shape through duplication.” Scans, Hair Squares, #7 to the present were works in which “each square consists of a simple line scanning a predetermined surface. The material is my hair saved as it is lost in my genetically-based balding process. By making use of the inevitable, my concern is to attempt a meditative understanding of time. . . Each square hairline requires about two months to complete. . . The process is a gate for the hair’s transference to another context—incorporating similarity, differences, continuity, and divisions. The work begun soon after I learned to spin and I learned to spin at approximately the same time the balding process began. Although the work continues, there is no development. All elements were present at the beginning.”

Excerpted from Brentano, R., & Savitt, M. (1981). 112 Workshop, 112 Greene Street: History, artists & artworks. New York: New York University Press.