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Lot Essay
Born in Zurich in 1973, Urs Fischer has become known for his unexpectedinterventions within a variety of settings, whether interior spaces or urbanenvironments. His experimental aesthetic means that many of his works take on the appearance of research investigations or explorations into entropy and opticality. Employing a variety of materials and sometimes relying on negative forms such as cutouts and dugouts, Fischer's works are notoriously difficult to pinpoint, yet his practice is characterized by a consistent dialogue or juxtaposition between seemingly opposite elements. These include the straightforward and the surreal, the architectural and the anti-architectural, the monumental and the invisible, the material and the immaterial, and the playful and the dangerous.
Fischer frequently makes use of everyday materials in his works, including foodproducts, tools, dust, and readymade furniture. For his 2003 exhibition at SadieColes HQ in London, in an early example of his use of wax as a medium, Fischer created three life-sized candles depicting female figures. Lit throughout the duration of the show, the figurative candles melted gradually, thus simultaneously transforming the physical shapes of the sculptures while emphasizing the notion of the immaterial.
There is a sense of danger implicit in many of Fischer's works. His physical interventions require careful orchestration and involve not only the tearing apart of concrete floors but, more pervasively, cutting through walls. Such actions forge a direct link to heralded pioneers Gordon Matta-Clark and Michael Heizer, who, beginning in the late 1960s, pushed the envelope of art-making through invasive engagements with natural or architectural structures, often on a gigantic scale. Fischer's oeuvre similarly involves the deconstruction of physical space, but the ironic humor that characterizes his production and the wide breadth of his output firmly distinguish him from the earlier generation.
In Tomorrow (2010), multiple tear-shaped drops partially obstruct a silkscreened image of a young woman. Set against an aluminum panel, the work combines references to popular culture with the cartoon-like imagery of tears, which might be a pun on artistic expressivity.
Fischer frequently makes use of everyday materials in his works, including foodproducts, tools, dust, and readymade furniture. For his 2003 exhibition at SadieColes HQ in London, in an early example of his use of wax as a medium, Fischer created three life-sized candles depicting female figures. Lit throughout the duration of the show, the figurative candles melted gradually, thus simultaneously transforming the physical shapes of the sculptures while emphasizing the notion of the immaterial.
There is a sense of danger implicit in many of Fischer's works. His physical interventions require careful orchestration and involve not only the tearing apart of concrete floors but, more pervasively, cutting through walls. Such actions forge a direct link to heralded pioneers Gordon Matta-Clark and Michael Heizer, who, beginning in the late 1960s, pushed the envelope of art-making through invasive engagements with natural or architectural structures, often on a gigantic scale. Fischer's oeuvre similarly involves the deconstruction of physical space, but the ironic humor that characterizes his production and the wide breadth of his output firmly distinguish him from the earlier generation.
In Tomorrow (2010), multiple tear-shaped drops partially obstruct a silkscreened image of a young woman. Set against an aluminum panel, the work combines references to popular culture with the cartoon-like imagery of tears, which might be a pun on artistic expressivity.