URS FISCHER (B. 1973)

“Fischer’s work, oscillating between rawness and tenderness, all-too-knowing experience and willful innocence, evokes an existence ruled by extremes that deftly balances humor and tragedy, delicacy and brutality, complexity and banality, to create poignant vignettes of everyday life.” Claudia Schmuckli

Widely recognized as one of the leading artists of his generation, Fischer’s stylistically diverse practice epitomizes contemporary attitudes towards artistic production by refusing to be bound by material limitations. His first series of fully digital sculptures, CHAOS features 501 unique NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Carefully choreographed in a series of mesmerizing collisions, the first 500 sculptures will feature a unique pairing of spontaneously coupled objects. The culminating sculpture — CHAOS #501 — will unite all 1,000 objects represented in CHAOS #1-500.

The unusual pairings found in CHAOS emerge as a meditation of the Duchampian Readymade and continue Fischer’s long withstanding practice of juxtaposing seemingly unrelated objects, creating surreal and unpredictable conversations. From his two-dimensional Problem Paints to his sculptural works such as Bad Timing, Lamb Chop!, Untitled (Lamp/Bear) and more recently Things, Fischer’s uncanny juxtapositions have the ability to trigger unexpecting discourses on contemporary life. As Claudia Schmuckli has described of Fischer’s practice, “Drawing freely from a multiplicity of sources without regard for tradition and hierarchy, his work effortlessly combines elements of high, mainstream, and underground cultures in a convincing demonstration of how irrelevant such categorizations have become. Fischer’s work, oscillating between rawness and tenderness, all-too-knowing experience and willful innocence, evokes an existence ruled by extremes that deftly balances humor and tragedy, delicacy and brutality, complexity and banality, to create poignant vignettes of everyday life” (C. Schmuckli, Urs Fischer: Mary Poppins, exh. cat., Blaffer Gallery, Houston, 2006, p. 36).

With regard to CHAOS, Fischer has explained that the selection of objects represents all sectors of life, and that their pairings are completely intuitive—they can be amusing, straightforward, complimentary, or utterly disparate. Regardless, each pairing is as legitimate as the next, resultantly conjuring up an infinite amount of stories and associations. For instance, CHAOS #73 Consumer merges a coconut and a Louboutin stiletto, while both the coconut and the stiletto have factored into Fischer’s art before in works like Untitled (Suspended Line of Fruit), 2012 and Skyline, 2002, the surprising new pairing conjures wholly different ideas. On one hand the stiletto can simultaneously be seen as a symbol of female power and sexuality; while the coconut, a nourishing fruit that produces its own milk, can be a stand in for motherhood. Indeed, Fischer has often referred to fruits as mothers built around a seed.

Meanwhile, CHAOS #74 Bliss appears to take a wholly different approach. Perhaps relying on more formal qualities the golden-yellow balloon, here, seems to mimic the yellow glow of the yield sign, driving home the formal and symbolic qualities of the traffic sign. Whereas the final NFT, CHAOS #75 Denominator, creates an undeniable link between sex and money. While the formal qualities of the roll of condoms perfectly echo those of the dollar bill, there appears to be a more sinister current coursing through this juxtaposition, as if the artist was signaling that what truly sells is, as the saying goes “sex.”