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Lot Essay
'Art is like people; you cannot reduce them to a couple of sentences, they are much more complex, much richer’ (U. Fischer, quoted in B. Curiger, M. Gioni & J. Morgan (eds.), Urs Fischer: Shovel in a Hole, exh. cat., New Museum, New York, 2009, p. 62).
‘The way I see it, my paintings are more like sculptures. I see them as objects on the wall that have a particular surface. The paint applied is just one possible layer’ (U. Fischer, quoted in M. Gioni, B. Curiger, & J. Morgan (eds.), Urs Fischer: Shovel in a Hole, exh. cat., New Museum, New York, 2009, p. 60).
Towering above the viewer, Urs Fischer’s Vain Whining presents a dramatic collage-like combination of forms and imagery. A zany fusion of mingled and mangled details collides to spectacular effect, its scale and tempting saturated colours create a work with a billboard-like intensity. The tactility of the dense layers beckons close inspection, revealing cartoonish clouds and letters floating below the hyper-fat surface and source image. Goading the eye to unpick the various layers, we arrive at the source image of Meg Ryan gazing out from the cover of Vanity Fair magazine.
Fischer has long been a master of collage, combining domestic utensils with other objects, rendering them useless such as in his large scale sculpture Untitled (Lamp/Bear), 2005-2006. Its elements instantly recognizable in their staggering verisimilitude, Fischer drew inspiration from the everyday objects of his surroundings such as tables, chairs, and foodstuffs; these explorations into the banal resulting in extraordinary, bewildering creations. Recognizing the potential to create further bizarre and evocative juxtapositions through collage, Fischer continues to assemble an arsenal of source material from both art historical and mass media sources.
In Vain Whining, Fischer deliberately undermines the notion of ‘High’ art by colliding it against non-descript cartoon imagery of the so-called ‘Low’ art. The rain drops and opaque clouds recall the coloured circles sometimes employed in John Baldessari’s works to obscure people’s faces. Here, though, they have been reincarnated in a gleaming, plastic form of impossibly puffy white clouds. Long a media magpie, Vain Whining gleefully appropriates ready-made imagery from popular magazines, cropping, enlarging and overlaying the image to the extent that it is no longer immediately recognizable. The enduring gaze of the seductive starlet in the backdrop heightens that sense of Fischer’s work serving as a support mechanism for the viewer, prompting us to question our own gaze and fascination with popular culture. Fischer’s mechanized works poignantly deplete these associations, as Fischer explains, 'art is like people; you cannot reduce them to a couple of sentences, they are much more complex, much richer’ (U. Fischer, quoted in B. Curiger, M. Gioni & J. Morgan (eds.), Urs Fischer: Shovel in a Hole, exh. cat., New Museum, New York, 2009, p. 62).
Informed by the artist’s celebrated exhibition at Palazzo Grassi in 2012 where he presented his artist’s studio as an installation, Fischer works across several media, incorporating materials as diverse as foodstuff, wax, taxidermy, mirrors and paint to explore the very essence of what it means to be an artist. Here, Fischer radically transforms the traditionally fat, planar quality of the glossy magazine, creating an indecipherably deep three-dimensional picture plane defined by his overlay and stapling of images. In this way, Vain Whining comments not only on the role of the artist, but is also a self-reflective exploration into the practice of painting and mark making, as demonstrated through the virtuous assemblage of paint, glass and lacquer built upon the three dimensional wooden tableau. As Fischer said, ‘the way I see it, my paintings are more like sculptures. I see them as objects on the wall that have a particular surface. The paint applied is just one possible layer.’ (U. Fischer, quoted in interview with M. Gioni, in B. Curiger, M.
Gioni & J. Morgan (eds.), Urs Fischer: Shovel in a Hole, exh. cat., New Museum, New York, 2009, p. 60). In this sense, Vain Whining can be seen as a sculptural work that exhibits Fischer’s characteristic showmanship and reflects his theatrical talent for staging his artwork
‘The way I see it, my paintings are more like sculptures. I see them as objects on the wall that have a particular surface. The paint applied is just one possible layer’ (U. Fischer, quoted in M. Gioni, B. Curiger, & J. Morgan (eds.), Urs Fischer: Shovel in a Hole, exh. cat., New Museum, New York, 2009, p. 60).
Towering above the viewer, Urs Fischer’s Vain Whining presents a dramatic collage-like combination of forms and imagery. A zany fusion of mingled and mangled details collides to spectacular effect, its scale and tempting saturated colours create a work with a billboard-like intensity. The tactility of the dense layers beckons close inspection, revealing cartoonish clouds and letters floating below the hyper-fat surface and source image. Goading the eye to unpick the various layers, we arrive at the source image of Meg Ryan gazing out from the cover of Vanity Fair magazine.
Fischer has long been a master of collage, combining domestic utensils with other objects, rendering them useless such as in his large scale sculpture Untitled (Lamp/Bear), 2005-2006. Its elements instantly recognizable in their staggering verisimilitude, Fischer drew inspiration from the everyday objects of his surroundings such as tables, chairs, and foodstuffs; these explorations into the banal resulting in extraordinary, bewildering creations. Recognizing the potential to create further bizarre and evocative juxtapositions through collage, Fischer continues to assemble an arsenal of source material from both art historical and mass media sources.
In Vain Whining, Fischer deliberately undermines the notion of ‘High’ art by colliding it against non-descript cartoon imagery of the so-called ‘Low’ art. The rain drops and opaque clouds recall the coloured circles sometimes employed in John Baldessari’s works to obscure people’s faces. Here, though, they have been reincarnated in a gleaming, plastic form of impossibly puffy white clouds. Long a media magpie, Vain Whining gleefully appropriates ready-made imagery from popular magazines, cropping, enlarging and overlaying the image to the extent that it is no longer immediately recognizable. The enduring gaze of the seductive starlet in the backdrop heightens that sense of Fischer’s work serving as a support mechanism for the viewer, prompting us to question our own gaze and fascination with popular culture. Fischer’s mechanized works poignantly deplete these associations, as Fischer explains, 'art is like people; you cannot reduce them to a couple of sentences, they are much more complex, much richer’ (U. Fischer, quoted in B. Curiger, M. Gioni & J. Morgan (eds.), Urs Fischer: Shovel in a Hole, exh. cat., New Museum, New York, 2009, p. 62).
Informed by the artist’s celebrated exhibition at Palazzo Grassi in 2012 where he presented his artist’s studio as an installation, Fischer works across several media, incorporating materials as diverse as foodstuff, wax, taxidermy, mirrors and paint to explore the very essence of what it means to be an artist. Here, Fischer radically transforms the traditionally fat, planar quality of the glossy magazine, creating an indecipherably deep three-dimensional picture plane defined by his overlay and stapling of images. In this way, Vain Whining comments not only on the role of the artist, but is also a self-reflective exploration into the practice of painting and mark making, as demonstrated through the virtuous assemblage of paint, glass and lacquer built upon the three dimensional wooden tableau. As Fischer said, ‘the way I see it, my paintings are more like sculptures. I see them as objects on the wall that have a particular surface. The paint applied is just one possible layer.’ (U. Fischer, quoted in interview with M. Gioni, in B. Curiger, M.
Gioni & J. Morgan (eds.), Urs Fischer: Shovel in a Hole, exh. cat., New Museum, New York, 2009, p. 60). In this sense, Vain Whining can be seen as a sculptural work that exhibits Fischer’s characteristic showmanship and reflects his theatrical talent for staging his artwork