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Urs Fischer

Beds & Problem Paintings

February 23–April 7, 2012
Beverly Hills

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Installation video

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Works Exhibited

Urs Fischer, Problem Painting, 2011 Milled aluminum panel, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, spray enamel, acrylic silkscreen medium, and acrylic paint, 142 × 106 inches (360.7 × 269.2 cm)© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, Problem Painting, 2011

Milled aluminum panel, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, spray enamel, acrylic silkscreen medium, and acrylic paint, 142 × 106 inches (360.7 × 269.2 cm)
© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, Problem Painting, 2012 Milled aluminum panel, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, spray enamel, acrylic silkscreen medium, and acrylic paint, 142 × 106 inches (360.7 × 269.2 cm)© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, Problem Painting, 2012

Milled aluminum panel, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, spray enamel, acrylic silkscreen medium, and acrylic paint, 142 × 106 inches (360.7 × 269.2 cm)
© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, Problem Painting, 2011 Milled aluminum panel, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, spray enamel, acrylic silkscreen medium, and acrylic paint, 142 × 106 inches (360.7 × 269.2 cm)© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, Problem Painting, 2011

Milled aluminum panel, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, spray enamel, acrylic silkscreen medium, and acrylic paint, 142 × 106 inches (360.7 × 269.2 cm)
© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, Problem Painting, 2012 Milled aluminum panel, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, spray enamel, acrylic silkscreen medium, and acrylic paint, 142 × 106 inches (360.7 × 269.2 cm)© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, Problem Painting, 2012

Milled aluminum panel, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, spray enamel, acrylic silkscreen medium, and acrylic paint, 142 × 106 inches (360.7 × 269.2 cm)
© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, Problem Painting, 2012 Milled aluminum panel, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, spray enamel, acrylic silkscreen medium, and acrylic paint, 142 × 106 inches (360.7 × 269.2 cm)© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, Problem Painting, 2012

Milled aluminum panel, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, spray enamel, acrylic silkscreen medium, and acrylic paint, 142 × 106 inches (360.7 × 269.2 cm)
© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, Kratz, 2011 Cast aluminum, concrete, aluminum, epoxy, fiberglass, wire mesh, epoxy primer, polyester filler, one-component acrylic putty, urethane primer, polyester paint, and acrylic polyurethane matte clearcoat, 75 ¾ × 88 ½ × 25 ½ inches (192.4 × 224.8 × 64.8 cm), edition of 3© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, Kratz, 2011

Cast aluminum, concrete, aluminum, epoxy, fiberglass, wire mesh, epoxy primer, polyester filler, one-component acrylic putty, urethane primer, polyester paint, and acrylic polyurethane matte clearcoat, 75 ¾ × 88 ½ × 25 ½ inches (192.4 × 224.8 × 64.8 cm), edition of 3
© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, Untitled (Soft Bed), 2011 Cast aluminum, epoxy primer, polyester filler, one-component acrylic putty, urethane primer, polyester paint, and acrylic polyurethane matte clearcoat, 97 ½ × 82 ¾ × 65 ¾ inches (248 × 210 × 167 cm), edition 1/3© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, Untitled (Soft Bed), 2011

Cast aluminum, epoxy primer, polyester filler, one-component acrylic putty, urethane primer, polyester paint, and acrylic polyurethane matte clearcoat, 97 ½ × 82 ¾ × 65 ¾ inches (248 × 210 × 167 cm), edition 1/3
© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, Fiction, 2012 Inkjet print on balsa wood, styrofoam, glue, steel, DC motor, and rechargeable battery, 28 ¼ × 63 × 39 ½ inches (71.8 × 160 × 100.3 cm), edition of 3© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, Fiction, 2012

Inkjet print on balsa wood, styrofoam, glue, steel, DC motor, and rechargeable battery, 28 ¼ × 63 × 39 ½ inches (71.8 × 160 × 100.3 cm), edition of 3
© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

About

Gagosian is pleased to present a major exhibition of new work by Urs Fischer, his first exhibition with the gallery.

Fischer’s uncanny ability to envisage and produce objects on the brink of falling apart or undergoing psychic transformation has resulted in sculptures in a bewildering variety of materials, including unstable substances such as melting wax and rotting vegetables. Continuously searching for new sculptural solutions, he has built houses out of bread; enlivened empty space with mechanistic jokes; deconstructed objects and then replicated them; and transferred others from three dimensions to two and back again via photographic processes. He combines daring formal adventures in space, scale, and material with a mordant sense of humor.

In recent times, Fischer has been exploring the genres of classical art history (still lifes, portraits, nudes, landscapes, and interiors) at the intersection with everyday life—in cast sculptures and assemblages, paintings, digital montages, spatial installations, mutating or kinetic objects, and texts. As its title suggests, the principal elements of this exhibition are two bed sculptures, and a series of huge paintings on aluminum panels. The bed sculptures—signals of an alternate surrealist world—appear to buckle under the pressure of some invisible force. One bed, cast in aluminum but disguised in a layer of mimetic paint, is made even more credible by the pile of real concrete that has been poured on top of it, as if to hasten its collapse; the other, a total wreck that is actually the result of an intricate multiple casting process, has been painted over with a gradient of color “distilled” from a landscape photograph. Around the walls, the paintings—vintage publicity headshots, colored and enlarged to a monumental scale, then obstructed by silkscreened images such as a bolt or a banana—present a clash of representational systems that is both convulsive and darkly humorous. In another part of the gallery, a table, also a perfect replica of a real object, vibrates almost imperceptibly.

A further proposition in Fischer’s pursuit of altering perception using the stuff of reality is a series of diminutive mirrored chrome-steel sculptures that recall the impactful installation Service à la Française (2009), a Pop Minimalist marvel of perceptual play where viewers could walk through a “cityscape” of mirrored boxes. Here highly detailed, composite color photographs of objects including a ping-pong paddle, asparagus stalk, calculator, and stress ball, all slightly enlarged from life, have been silkscreened onto the five mirrored planes (four sides and top) of each box. At once immaterial and hyperreal, these “perfect vehicles” provide a series of reflective grounds on which ideas about optics, exaggeration, and entropy converge.

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