ART CITIES: Paris-Urs Fischer
Urs Fischer rose to fame in 2011 at the 50th edition of the Venice Biennale when he melted a full-size wax copy of Giambologna’s “Rape of the Sabine Woman”, one of the great masterpieces of Renaissance sculpture. From the beginning of his career, Urs Fischer understood how to create a varied universe, made up of objects, figures and environments, all permeated with a sense of the absurd and irony.
By Efi MIchalarou
Photo: Gagosian Archive
Urs Fischer’s solo exhibition “Beauty” that shows new works from his series “problem Paintings” (2010- ), follows the fall 2023 presentation of Fischer’s public sculpture Wave (2018) at Place Vendôme, and the coincident display of his painting Candyfloss (2023) in the street-facing vitrine at Gagosian gallery. Marshaling a dizzying variety of materials and methods both established and unconventional, Fischer explores themes of perception and representation, distorting scale and reimagining common objects and images through technological intervention. By evoking and reworking historical genres and motifs, he embraces transformation and decay, producing art that inhabits a space between the real and the imagined. The Problem Paintings series represents a conscious flattening out and forcing together of disparate categories and associations, calling the status and relationship of each image’s components into question. While earlier “Problem Paintings” foreground food and manufactured objects, the paintings on view in Paris feature enlarged vintage publicity headshots of popular film actors Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, and Gene Tierney, partially obscured by silkscreened images of flowers. The subjects’ eyes gleam with mystery, while the vibrant colors of the blooms reflect the women’s enigmatic hidden depths. Fischer’s witty clash of images summons the romantic and sexual associations of flowers while hinting at the ephemeral character of glamour and fame; it also evokes the mustache that Marcel Duchamp penciled onto a postcard reproduction of the Mona Lisa in “L.H.O.O.Q.” or “La Joconde” (1919).The tense face-off between obfuscation and potential enacted by the works on view gives rise to the formal “problems” referenced in their collective title, while the masking of their subjects’ facial features hints at psychic and conceptual erasure. The blooms evoke floriography (the use of flowers as a coded poetic language), their pink, white, and blue colors echoing the symbolic colors of the “Tricolore”. And while their large scale suggests power and strength, they also serve as a metaphor for the women’s emergence into the sometimes harsh light of fame. Born in 1973, Urs Fischer began his artistic career studying photography at the Schule für Gestaltung in Zurich. He later lived in London and Los Angeles, and shared a studio with Rudolf Stingel in both Berlin and New York. Themes of absence and presence, as well as the processes of art production, pervade his work, in which Fischer makes use of tables, chairs, shadows, and light to explore distortion and anthropomorphism. In “Stuhl mit” (1995–2001), bulbous, fabric-covered legs merge with a wooden chair, and in “Studies for chairs for individual seating positions” (1993), the absence of a human body is suggested by a sawdust and rubber mold draped over the furniture. Food is also a major element in Fischer’s work. Rotting, melting, and crumbling, and placed in juxtaposition with permanent materials like metal, bricks, and mortar, it serves as a memento mori. “Rotten Foundation” (1998) comprises a brick structure built on a foundation of spoiling produce; “Untitled (Bread House)” (2004–05), a Swiss chalet constructed from loaves of bread, was left to be eaten by parakeets; and in the “Problem Paintings” (2010–), portraits on aluminum panels are obscured by images of eggs, peppers, and kiwis, as well as twisted bolts and half-smoked cigarettes. In 2009 Fischer presented “Marguerite de Ponty” at the New Museum in New York—his first large-scale solo exhibition in an American museum, which featured a series of immersive installations and hallucinatory environments including mirrored labyrinths and uncannily wallpapered rooms. At the Venice Biennale in 2011, his wax copy of Giambologna’s late-16th century sculpture “Rape of the Sabine Women” slowly melted, looming over additional candles depicting an office chair and a man wearing glasses and a sport coat. The candle works, which Fischer has produced since 2001, attest to his mastery of entropy, as well as his simultaneous incorporation and rejection of tradition.
Photo: Urs Fischer, Beauty, 2024, installation view, © Urs Fischer, Photo: Stefan Altenburger, Courtesy the artist and Gagosian
Info: Gagosian Gallery, 9 rue de Castiglione, Paris, France, Duration: 5/3-25/5/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:30-16:30, https://gagosian.com/
