Urs Fischer: “Problem Painting”, 2011
Urs Fischer: “Untitled”, 2007
Urs Fischer retrospective at MOCA Los Angeles The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) presents the first comprehensive museum retrospective of works by the internationally acclaimed Swiss-born artist Urs Fischer. April 21 – August 19, 2013.]]>
Source: Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Rooted in a twisted take on reality, Fischer’s work unabashedly declares its affiliation to Pop, Surrealism, and Dada, while its production techniques and imagery place the work firmly in our contemporary sphere. Fischer’s oeuvre is characterized by a morbid glamour—sex, the macabre, and the violent effects of fracture and collage make frequent appearances. But this adult and consumer-conscious world abuts a (not unrelated) fairytale landscape populated with giant teddy bears, houses made of bread, and melting objects. In the artist’s imagination anything is possible, including the drastic escalation in scale of a fist-size clay sculpture to a towering monolith of forty feet, apparently produced by the hands of a giant.
Fischer’s world is mutable and unexpected, and the pleasure that we derive from his sculpture and painting is based on our attraction and simultaneous repulsion to the dreamlike appearances that he constructs. Fischer’s work is characterized by an unending diversity. Sculptures are constructed from an elaborate aluminum casting process, roughly hewn in wood, glued together like a mosaic from broken mirror, or cast in wax only to melt away during the run of the exhibition. The artist delights in the possibilities of surface, contrasting, for example, the highly reflective planes of an aluminum box with a photo-realistic image of a consumer object that is printed on its sides to confuse the perception of flatness and depth, real and unreal, object and image. Even works that suggest the handmade touch of the artist turn out to have been produced through a range of digital processes in order to create the oddly surreal appearance of reality gone wrong.
One of today’s most important contemporary artists, Fischer is known for using a range of media to express the transience of art and, concomitantly, the human condition. Jessica Morgan, Curator, International Art, at Tate Modern in London, is curating the exhibition, which occupies a total of 65,000 square feet at both MOCA Grand Avenue and The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, from April 21, 2013, to August 19, 2013. Presenting his work of the last decade, the show brings together for the first time Fischer’s many iconic works from leading international collections as well as recent production. Using the two spaces of MOCA, the exhibition showcases Fischer’s propensity to bridge the banal and the fantastical. Each location has a distinct character and approach responding and adapting to the unique spaces of the museum. At MOCA, Fischer weaves together the storyline of his work: skeletons will meet movie stars, toys will greet grave-like holes, and our accustomed sense of disinterested distance will be simultaneously embraced and destroyed.
Related content
Urs Fischer – Tables, Heads, and Arms – Gagosian Gallery (exhibition, 2013)
Follow us on:
