TO OCT. 26

Given the pioneering architectural photography of Bernd and Hilla Becher—not to mention the whole generation of young photographers they mentored—the world hardly needed another German photographer whose stock in trade is to chronicle functional architecture with a detached eye. Yet “Facades”—a series by Munich-based photographer Roland Fischer that is partly on display at G Fine Art—does have artistic merit, if not exactly charm. Fischer’s crystal-clear images (Cecil Street, Singapore is pictured) of contemporary office-building facades—including some prints as large as 71 inches by 49 inches—combine the color monumentalism of Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth with the spiritual emptiness of Candida Hofer’s signature empty-building interiors. Thoroughly decontextualized and without a hint of sky (or life), Fischer’s two-dimensional images evoke such bloodless geometries—think Frank Stella during his pinstripe-line period—that even demonstrably ugly buildings begin to take on an impressively ordered rigidity. Similarly right-angled but with a far more cheerful color scheme is Jason Balicki’s Deconstruction Simulation Model—an acrylic wall painting that pays homage to Mondrian. Living up to its reputation for exhibitional coherence, G backs up Fischer and Balicki with the works of several other minimalist artists. Of these, the most resonant is Inigo Manglano-Ovalle’s photograph of a woman standing inside the Farnsworth House in Plano, Ill.—Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s glass-enclosed classic of modernist architecture. Unlike Fischer’s line-and-plane buildings, Mies’ leave room for humans, too. These works are on view from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays, to Saturday, Oct. 26, at G Fine Art, 3271 M St. NW. Free. (202) 333-0300. (Louis Jacobson)