Urs Fischer
dal 22/2/2012 al 6/4/2012
Segnalato da
22/2/2012
Urs Fischer
Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills
Beds & Problem Paintings. Fischer's uncanny ability to envisage and produce objects on the brink of falling apart or undergoing psychic transformation has resulted in sculptures in a bewildering variety of materials, including unstable substances such as melting wax and rotting vegetables. As its title suggests, the principal elements of this exhibition are two bed sculptures, and a series of huge paintings on aluminum panels.
Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce a major exhibition of new work by Urs Fischer, his first
exhibition with the gallery.
Fischer's uncanny ability to envisage and produce objects on the brink of falling apart or undergoing
psychic transformation has resulted in sculptures in a bewildering variety of materials, including
unstable substances such as melting wax and rotting vegetables. Continuously searching for new
sculptural solutions, he has built houses out of bread; enlivened empty space with mechanistic jokes;
deconstructed objects and then replicated them; and transferred others from three dimensions to
two and back again via photographic processes. He combines daring formal adventures in space,
scale, and material with a mordant sense of humor.
In recent times, Fischer has been exploring the genres of classical art history (still lifes, portraits,
nudes, landscapes, and interiors) at the intersection with everyday life—in cast sculptures and
assemblages, paintings, digital montages, spatial installations, mutating or kinetic objects, and texts.
As its title suggests, the principal elements of this exhibition are two bed sculptures, and a series of
huge paintings on aluminum panels. The bed sculptures—signals of an alternate surrealist world—
appear to buckle under the pressure of some invisible force. One bed, cast in aluminum but disguised
in a layer of mimetic paint, is made even more credible by the pile of real concrete that has been
poured on top of it, as if to hasten its collapse; the other, a total wreck that is actually the result of an
intricate multiple casting process, has been painted over with a gradient of color "distilled" from a
landscape photograph. Around the walls, the paintings—vintage publicity headshots, colored and
enlarged to a monumental scale, then obstructed by silkscreened images such as a bolt or a
banana—present a clash of representational systems that is both convulsive and darkly humorous. In
another part of the gallery a table, also a perfect replica of a real object, vibrates almost
imperceptibly.
A further proposition in Fischer's pursuit of altering perception using the stuff of reality is a series of
diminutive mirrored chrome-steel sculptures that recall the impactful installation Service à la
Française (2009), a Pop Minimalist marvel of perceptual play where viewers could walk through a
'cityscape' of mirrored boxes. Here highly detailed, composite color photographs of objects including
a ping-pong paddle, asparagus, a calculator, and a stress ball, all slightly enlarged from life, have
been silkscreened onto the five mirrored planes (four sides and top) of each box. At once immaterial
and hyperreal, these 'perfect vehicles' provide a series of reflective grounds on which ideas about
optics, exaggeration and entropy converge.
Urs Fischer was born in 1973 in Zurich, and studied at the Schule für Gestaltung, Zurich. His work is
included in many important public and private collections worldwide. Recent major exhibitions
include “Kir Royal,” Kunsthaus Zurich (2004); “Not My House Not My Fire,” Espace 315, Centre
Pompidou, Paris (2005); “Mary Poppins,” Blaffer Gallery, The Art Museum of the University of
Houston, Texas (2006); “Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty,” New Museum, New York (2009); and
“Oscar the Grouch,” The Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2010); as well
as the Biennale di Venezia in 2003, 2005, and 2007. Fischer lives and works in New York.
Fischer lives and works in New York City.
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Contact: Meg Blackburn, meg@fitzandco.com, t. +212.627.1455 ext. 225, www.fitzandco.com
Image: Urs Fischer, To be titled, 2011, Milled aluminum panel, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic silkscreen medium, and acrylic paint, 142 x 106 inches (360.7 x 269.2 cm) © Urs Fischer. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery. Photo: Mats Nordman
Opening reception for the artist: Thursday, February 23rd, from 6 to 8 pm
Gagosian Gallery
456 North Camden Drive Beverly Hills
Tue–Sat 10:00am–6:00pm
Admission free