LOS ANGELES, CA.- Edward Cella Art + Architecture (ECAA) opened the Gallery’s inaugural solo exhibition by renowned contemporary West-coast architect Frederick Fisher (principal, Frederick Fisher and Partners of Los Angeles). Entitled Frederick Fisher: Thinking by Hand, this exhibition of new and recent watercolors explores the form making process and composition strategies Fisher employs when envisioning and creating proposals for a wide variety of potential architectural commissions. Surprisingly, this is Fisher’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles and is the gallery’s first solo exhibition for an architect.

His jewel-like watercolors are on view April 21, through May 22, 2010.

Fisher’s work, inspired by his 29 years of professional practice and his recent 2008 Fellowship at The American Academy in Rome, explores a variety of imagined public and private spaces through a series of elemental and geometric watercolors. Several important images in the series explore exciting and novel living and working spaces connecting art with nature.

Through other works in the series, Fisher reevaluates the traditional museum structure by conceptually investigating the recycling and transformation of abandoned office buildings and industrial facilities as potential museums; echoing the way palaces were repurposed in the 19th century and factories were re-inhabited in the 20th century. As Fisher notes, “The museum has historically thrived in reclaimed spaces. The ongoing process of urban growth and decay presents a new inventory of potential museum sites.”

The exhibition also evokes the architect’s studio, informally mounting Fisher’s small format watercolors with pushpins on the Gallery’s walls. The exhibition underscores the architect’s use of drawing and watercolor as a creative practice during the initial steps of understanding a new commission. Fisher states, “This work is the direct engagement of hand, eye, and thought with repeated and varied renditions of drawings and watercolors to find and refine my architectural ideas.” The importance of form-making in the architect’s practice was recently underscored by Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Hawthorne in connection with Fisher’s recent work, “It is not simply the precision of [his] forms … It is what those forms frame, acknowledge and make room for.”

Recognized for his prominent civic projects like the Annenberg Beach House in Santa Monica and PS1 in New York, Fisher's recent architectural investigations at the American Academy in Rome entitled Imaginary Museum are presented in digital renderings to accompany the exhibition and further illustrate Fisher's process.