Ultimi giorni per la particolare installazione di Urs Fisher alla Sadie Coles, al 62 di Kingly Street a Londra
Photography: Mats Nordman
Press Release:
Urs Fischer’s new exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ centres on an
installation of 3,000 plaster raindrops suspended throughout the gallery. Titled
Melodrama, the raindrops encompass a spectrum of shades from green to lilac, massing
together into a gently psychedelic storm cloud which weaves in a swirling
movement through the space. Yet their forms are incongruously physical – each
droplet is a bulbous pendant cast from a hand-modelled prototype, and hangs from
the ceiling by lengths of near-invisible monofilament. The installation’s
romantic overtones collide with a bluntly cartoonish quality, bordering on the
slapstick, that resonates with the double-edged register of much of Fischer’s
art.
The heaviness and irregularity of the objects compound their
lurking air of oddness. The arrayed drops begin to resemble other free-floating
bodies – tangible or virtual, magical or mundane – from a swarm of gloopy
commas to squirts of icing. They are emblematic of a strain of fairytale-style
surrealism that pervades Fischer’s work, manifested variously by his wryly
anthropomorphic furniture (including a lilac-hued grand piano collapsing droopingly
like one of Dalí’s melting watches) or by the wax effigies which slowly implode
into formlessness as wicks burn within them. Myriads of coloured droplets have
featured explicitly in Fischer’s earlier work. This is the third in a series of
expansive installations of raindrops including Vintage Violence (2004–05) and
Horses Dream of Horses (2004), which respectively present blood-red and
turquoise explosions of droplets. In more recent works such Secret (2012–13),
globular raindrops are printed in dense clusters across the large, sultry
headshots of 1950s Hollywood idols.
Mirroring the hand-sculpted forms of the raindrops are new
sculptures in clay. Much of Fischer’s recent work has employed this medium: in 2011,
he began an on-going public art project in which members of the public are
invited to make objects out of freely supplied clay. Here, a single figurative
sculpture is repeated in clay throughout the gallery, teasing out a dualism
between originals and copies that has underpinned much of his art. In 2011, in
the latest (and perhaps most literal) in a string of references to the working
space of the artist’s studio, he collaborated with German artist Georg Herold
in modelling clay figures from nude models; the objects were then exhibited alongside
the same nude figures. Here, the sculptures appear metamorphic and unstable,
redolent not only of tragic Pompeian casts but also the melting figures of
Medardo Rosso (themselves often only preserved in the mediated form of
photographs). Collectively, these sculptures describe an earthbound world of
disorderly, golem-like forms in contrast with the symphony of suspended shapes
above. The floor-based works and the raindrops constitute a ‘heaven and earth’
tableau that is at once pointedly familiar and otherworldly.
Urs Fischer (b. Switzerland, 1973) traverses the fields of
painting, sculpture and installation, as well as photography and drawing, in a
multifaceted body of work that eludes formal or generic categorisation, coaxing
comparisons with the multifarious practices of Martin Kippenberger, Franz West,
Fischl i & Weiss, and others. His work simultaneously echoes the shifting
moods of Dada, Pop Art and conceptualism; and he deploys a dizzying range of
materials from food to mirrors to dirt. Urs Fischer lives in New York. Recent
major exhibitions include those at MOCA, Los Angeles, 2013; Madame Fisscher,
Palazzo Grassi, Venice, Italy, 2012; and Skinny Sunrise, Kunsthalle Wien,
Vienna, 2012. He has had solo shows throughout Europe and the USA, including
Oscar the Grouch, The Brant Foundation, Greenwich (CT) (2010) and Marguerite de
Ponty, New Museum, New York (2009). In 2004, Not My House Not My Fire took
place at Espace 315, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the retrospective Kir Royal
was held at Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland. Urs Fischer’s work has been included
in numerous group exhibitions including the Venice Biennale in 2003, 2007, and
2011.
For f urther inf ormation please contact the gallery at +44
(0)20 7493 8611 or press@sadiecoles.com
