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Urs Fischer

March 20–May 13, 2017
Hong Kong

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger

Works Exhibited

Urs Fischer, Foamcore, 2017 Aluminum panel, aramid honeycomb, two-component polyurethane adhesive, two-component epoxy primer, galvanized steel rivet nuts, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic silkscreen medium, acrylic paint, and oil medium, 96 × 120 inches (243.8 × 304.8 cm)© Urs Fischer

Urs Fischer, Foamcore, 2017

Aluminum panel, aramid honeycomb, two-component polyurethane adhesive, two-component epoxy primer, galvanized steel rivet nuts, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic silkscreen medium, acrylic paint, and oil medium, 96 × 120 inches (243.8 × 304.8 cm)
© Urs Fischer

Urs Fischer, Kumquat Tree, 2017 Aluminum panel, aramid honeycomb, two-component polyurethane adhesive, two-component epoxy primer, galvanized steel rivet nuts, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic silkscreen medium, acrylic paint, oil medium, 96 × 72 inches (243.8 × 182.9 cm)© Urs Fischer

Urs Fischer, Kumquat Tree, 2017

Aluminum panel, aramid honeycomb, two-component polyurethane adhesive, two-component epoxy primer, galvanized steel rivet nuts, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic silkscreen medium, acrylic paint, oil medium, 96 × 72 inches (243.8 × 182.9 cm)
© Urs Fischer

Urs Fischer, Franz, 2017 Aluminum panel, aramid honeycomb, two-component polyurethane adhesive, two-component epoxy primer, galvanized steel rivet nuts, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic silkscreen medium, acrylic paint, oil medium, 96 × 72 inches (243.8 × 182.9 cm)© Urs Fischer

Urs Fischer, Franz, 2017

Aluminum panel, aramid honeycomb, two-component polyurethane adhesive, two-component epoxy primer, galvanized steel rivet nuts, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic silkscreen medium, acrylic paint, oil medium, 96 × 72 inches (243.8 × 182.9 cm)
© Urs Fischer

About

As an artist you compete with reality, and the order of reality is always more interesting than the order you can make. But, because you make the order, it becomes information.
—Urs Fischer

Gagosian is pleased to present new works by Urs Fischer. This is his first solo exhibition in Asia.

Fischer reinvests traditional art historical genres (still lifes, portraits, nudes, landscapes, and interiors) with an abundance of rich and surprising forms. In his cast sculptures and assemblages, paintings, digital montages, spatial installations, kinetic objects, and texts, he ceaselessly mines the intersection where art meets everyday life. He has built houses out of bread, enlivened empty space with mechanistic jokes, deconstructed objects and then replicated them, and transferred other objects from three dimensions to two and back again via photographic processes. His daring formal adventures in space, scale, and material also reveal a mordant sense of humor.

For the title of this exhibition, Fischer provides a musical staff, with a treble clef and several notes positioned along four—rather than the customary five—lines. The notation implies music, but with no apparent tune; it is a title, yet it is inexpressible. Such paradoxes course through Fischer’s oeuvre. In his Problem Paintings from 2011, he obstructed vintage publicity headshots with silkscreened images of ordinary objects such as a bolt or a banana. The current exhibition continues this perception-altering pursuit; it comprises eleven large-scale tableaux made up of found images, expressive gestures, and photographs of the artist’s personal spaces. But these pictures are neither paintings nor photographs, neither abstract nor representational. By digitally manipulating photographs of brushstrokes, Fischer forges gestural streaks by inserting and blurring images of television screens, faces, and more. The brushstrokes are silkscreened over “homescapes” and “studioscapes” (domestic and atelier views) that provide glimpses of works in progress, art materials, furniture, and artworks from Fischer’s own collection.

In Foamcore (2017), silkscreen test prints and works by Fischer and others are propped against a studio wall. Purple blots and smears of television static interrupt perspectival logic, making it difficult to tell whether the brushstrokes are on the surface of the painting or on the stacked works in the room. By destabilizing the pictorial conventions of foreground and background, Fischer also plays into a long art-historical tradition of paintings within paintings, from the nautical scenes and maps on the walls of Vermeer’s interiors and Velázquez’s grand enigma Las Meninas to Matisse’s pictographic Red Studio. Undermining the assumed conventions of painting and photography, Fischer’s cunningly generated visual strata act as unstable and irresoluble meditations on the act of looking.

作為藝術家,你要與現實世界競爭,現實的秩序比自己能創造的秩序永遠有趣得多,但你創造的秩序,會變成信息。
—烏爾斯‧菲舍爾

高古軒畫廊欣然呈獻烏爾斯‧菲舍爾首次亞洲個展,展出他的精彩新作。

菲舍爾以各種令人意想不到的形式,重新探索靜物、肖像、裸體、風景與室內景觀等傳統藝術類別。他透過雕塑、裝配藝術、繪畫、數碼剪接、空間裝置、動態藝術及文字,不斷發掘藝術與日常生活的連接點。除了建造麵包屋、以戲謔的機械活化空無一物的空間,以及解構和複製物品,他亦將立體物件變成平面,再以拍攝技巧還原至立體。菲舍爾以大膽手法探索空間、規模與物料的形式,展現尖酸的幽默感。

菲舍爾以四線譜(而非常見的五線譜)作為是次展覽的標題,上面只有一個高音譜號和幾個音符,既是樂曲,卻沒有旋律,既是標題,卻晦澀難懂。菲舍爾的作品一向也存在這份矛盾,以2011年創作的《問題畫作》系列(Problem Paintings)為例,他以螺栓或香蕉等日常物品的絲網印畫,掩蓋舊式的名人頭像。是次展覽延續這種顛覆固有觀念的手法,11幅大型畫作由現成圖像、富有表現力的動作與菲舍爾私人空間的照片組成。這些作品既不是畫,也不是照片,亦並非抽象或具象作品。菲舍爾以數碼手法妙用筆觸的照片,插入並模糊電視畫面和人臉等圖像,重現繪畫的動作。筆觸以絲網印刷技術印於家居和工作室圖片上,讓觀賞者一窺菲舍爾創作中的作品、所用的物料、傢具及其收藏的藝術品。

在作品《泡沫板》(2017年)中,菲舍爾與其他藝術家的絲網印畫試版及作品靠在工作室的牆上,紫色的印跡與電視靜態畫面的雪花躁點擾亂透視邏輯,令人難以確定筆觸是位於畫作表面,還是房內疊起的作品之上。透過模糊前景與背景的影像,菲舍爾亦探索畫中畫的傳統藝術手法,從維米爾(Vermeer)室內畫牆上的航海風景和地圖、維拉斯奎茲(Velázquez)神秘的《宮女》(Las Meninas),以至馬諦斯(Matisse)的意象作品《紅色畫室》(Red Studio),皆採用此手法。菲舍爾顛覆繪畫及攝影的法則,巧妙塑造視覺層次,反覆而不解地反思觀賞藝術的行為。

Urs Fischer: Wave

Urs Fischer: Wave

In this video, Urs Fischer elaborates on the creative process behind his public installation Wave, at Place Vendôme, Paris.

Anna Weyant’s Two Eileens (2022) on the cover of Gagosian Quarterly, Winter 2022

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2022

The Winter 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Anna Weyant’s Two Eileens (2022) on its cover.

Urs Fischer: Denominator

Urs Fischer: Denominator

Urs Fischer sits down with his friend the author and artist Eric Sanders to address the perfect viewer, the effects of marketing, and the limits of human understanding.

Urs Fischer and Francesco Bonami speaking amidst the installation of "Urs Fischer: Lovers" at Museo Jumex, Mexico City

Urs Fischer: Lovers

The exhibition Urs Fischer: Lovers at Museo Jumex, Mexico City, brings together works from international public and private collections as well as from the artist’s own archive, alongside new pieces made especially for the exhibition. To mark this momentous twenty-year survey, the artist sits down with the exhibition’s curator, Francesco Bonami, to discuss the installation.

Awol Erizku, Lion (Body) I, 2022, Duratrans on lightbox, 49 ⅜ × 65 ⅝ × 3 ¾ inches (125.4 × 166.7 × 9.5 cm) © Awol Erizku

Awol Erizku and Urs Fischer: To Make That Next Move

On the eve of Awol Erizku’s exhibition in New York, he and Urs Fischer discuss what it means to be an image maker, the beauty of blurring genres, the fetishization of authorship, and their shared love for Los Angeles.

Installation view of Urs Fischer’s Untitled (2011) in Ouverture, Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris, 2021. Artwork © Urs Fischer, courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich; Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection © Tadao Ando Architect & Associates, Niney et Marca Architectes, Agence Pierre-Antoine Gatier. Photo: Stefan Altenburger

Bourse de Commerce

William Middleton traces the development of the new institution, examining the collaboration between the collector François Pinault and the architect Tadao Ando in revitalizing the historic space. Middleton also speaks with artists Tatiana Trouvé and Albert Oehlen about Pinault’s passion as a collector, and with the Bouroullec brothers, who created design features for the interiors and exteriors of the museum.

News

Photo: Chad Moore

Artist Spotlight

Urs Fischer

June 24–30, 2020

Urs Fischer mines the potential of materials—from clay, steel, and paint to bread, dirt, and produce—to create works that disorient and bewilder. Through scale distortions, illusion, and the juxtaposition of common objects, his paintings, sculptures, photographs, and large-scale installations explore themes of perception and representation while maintaining a witty irreverence and mordant humor.

Photo: Chad Moore