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27/10/2009

Urs Fischer / Nikhil Chopra

New Museum, New York

Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty
curated by Massimiliano Gioni

New York, New York...The New Museum today announces details regarding its upcoming major exhibition of work by New York-based, Swiss artist Urs Fischer. For his first solo presentation in an American museum, Fischer will take over all three of the New Museum’s gallery floors to create a series of environments featuring towering aluminum sculptures, objects that appear to melt, and a labyrinth of silkscreened chrome steel boxes that will turn an entire floor into a dazzling cityscape of mirrored images. Marking the first time the New Museum building will be devoted to one single artist, “Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty” will be on view from October 28, 2009 through February 7, 2010.

An engineer of imaginary worlds, Urs Fischer has previously created sculptures in a rich variety of materials including such unstable substances as melting wax and rotting vegetables. In a continuous search for new plastic solutions, Fischer has in the past built houses Presenhuber, Zürich. out of bread and given life to robots and animated puppets; he has dissected objects or, alternatively, blown them out of proportion in order to reinvent our relationship to them. By digging up floors and carving massive holes in gallery walls, Fischer has explored the secret mechanisms of perception, combining the immediacy of Pop art with a neo-Baroque taste for the absurd. “Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty” is the culmination of four years of work: Neither a traditional survey nor a retrospective, but an “introspective,” as organizing curator Massimiliano Gioni calls it, the exhibition will combine new productions with iconic artworks, allowing for an in-depth look at Fischer’s practice. Choreographed entirely by the artist, the exhibition will offer viewers a unique opportunity to immerse themselves in Fischer’s universe, revealing the world of an artist who has emerged as one of the most exceptional talents working today. On the New Museum’s fourth floor, Fischer will present five new massive aluminum sculptures cast from small clays, hand-molded by the artist. Hanging from the ceiling or balancing awkwardly in space, these enormous biomorphic sculptures can be read as monumental abstractions, strange cocoons for mutant creatures, or cartoonish interpretations of Stonehenge.

On the third floor, Fischer will present an installation that will turn the Museum’s architecture into an image of itself, overlapping paintings and prints in a site-specific trompe l’oeil environment. In addition to these large installations, the exhibition will present smaller interventions that resonate with Fischer’s characteristic irreverence. In Noisette (2009), a motion- activated plastic tongue pops out of a hole punched in the wall, in a mischievous slapstick routine. The exhibition will also include a piano and a lamppost that appear to be melting under the pressure of some mysterious, invisible force. Simultaneously solid and soft, these sculptures recall the illusionism of a Salvador Dalí painting magically transported into three dimensions.

On the second floor, a similarly fluid interplay between illusion and reality pervades a major new installation that is the centerpiece of the New Museum exhibition. A technical tour de force that required more than 25,000 photographs and over twelve tons of steel, this is Urs Fischer’s most ambitious work to date. Fifty chrome steel boxes of various sizes will occupy the gallery, composing a grid of monoliths—an immersive cityscape of mirroring cubes onto which the artist has silkscreened a dizzying array of images. This walk-in sculpture will surround visitors with images that vary from a larger- than-life sneaker; a twelve-foot-tall model of the Empire State Building; an oversized éclair; a gigantic, raw T-Bone steak; and a huge effigy of Pop star Ashanti. Like a collage unraveling before the viewer’s eyes, the mirroring surface of each box will reflect both the spectators and the images silkscreened on the neighboring sculptures, creating an optical maze that concurrently renders everything immaterial and hyper-real. Turning perceptions into mirages, Fischer’s installation composes a mechanical ballet of images, transforming the motif of the Minimalist grid into a syncopated visual rapsody.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Urs Fischer was born in Zurich in 1973, and currently lives and works in New York City. He was included in “Unmonumental,” the New Museum’s inaugural exhibition for the opening of the SANAA-designed building in 2007. Fischer’s work has been the subject of several solo exhibitions in European museums, including the Kunsthaus in Zürich; the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam; and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. His work was also included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial.

PUBLICATION
On the occasion of the exhibition, a full-color, 480 illustrated page catalogue will be co-published by the New Museum and JRP Ringier. Urs Fischer: Shovel in a Hole will include the most complete selection of artist’s works to date as well as texts by Massimiliano Gioni, Director of Special Exhibitions at the New Museum; Bice Curiger, Curator at the Kunsthaus Zürich; and Jessica Morgan, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Tate Modern. The catalogue will be available for purchase ($69.95; $55.96 members) at the New Museum Store or by visiting http://www.newmuseumstore.org.

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Nikhil Chopra - Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing IX
curated by Eungie Joo, Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Programs.

Nikhil Chopra combines strategies associated with theater, portraiture, landscape drawing, photography, art actions, and installation to chronicle the world through live performance. As the Victorian draughtsman Yog Raj Chitrakar, Chopra haunts bustling market squares, forgotten old buildings, city streets, and museum galleries to make large-scale drawings. Within the performance, daily actions—washing, eating, drinking, sleeping, dressing, shaving, and observing—are transformed into ritualistic spectacle. While an ambiguous past collides with a unstable present, Yog Raj Chitrakar reveals the process of documenting what he sees while exploring self-portraiture, autobiography, history, fantasy, and sexuality.

For his exhibition at the New Museum, “Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing IX,” Chopra activates the lobby gallery, now a turn-of the-century tableau vivant, for five days (November 4–8, 2009) as Yog Raj Chitrakar. Visitors are encouraged to return often to witness the evolution of Yog Raj Chitrakar’s character as he explores, documents, and responds to the changing face of New York City. Documentation from three previous performances will also be on view. This exhibition is presented in conjunction with PERFORMA 09. Chopra will also lead a Propositions seminar November 13–14.

MEDIA CONTACTS: Gabriel Einsohn, Communications Director
press@newmuseum.org

Image: Urs Fischer

Opening 28 October, 2009

New Museum
235 Bowery- New York
Wed 12-6 PM, Thur and Friday 12-9 PM
Saturday and Sunday 12-6 PM
Monday and Tuesday closed
The Museum is closed to the public on Monday and Tuesday, except for pre-scheduled group tours on Tuesday.
General Admission: $12, Seniors: $10, Students: $8
Free 18 and under, Members

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