Urs Fischer is known for large-scale installations that often feature torn-out walls, dredged floors, life-size burning candles, and vast fields of unfired clay sculptures. For this Lever House installation, he is presenting twenty-six mirrored boxes, with titles such as CECILLE/BRENDA/ERICA, printed on all five visible sides with super- detailed silkscreen photographs of common objects encompassing foods, tools, and commercial products, including a banana, camera, clothes-pin, pencil, Tic Tac mints, and a twenty-dollar bill.
Fischer has placed each mirrored box on a painted wood plinth of various dimensions, and randomly scattered them around the space to disrupt the rigid geometry of the architectural space. In addition, he has carpeted the floor and added bright fluorescent lights to mimic the commercial environment in which these objects might be viewed or purchased.
Fischer's choice of subjects is as random as their placement, and they do not suggest any narrative or socio-political statement. The photographed objects have been removed from their original purposes and proportions in the same manner that Pop artists appropriated common objects during the igbos.
Fischer was initially trained as a photographer, and these works display his involvement with appropriation, technique, and presentation. Each object is digitally photographed in small parts, from all five vantage points. These small details are then congealed into one singular image revealing no perspective and with equal lighting on all sides. They are randomly sized and fill the perimeters of the mirrored box, and seem to float in space. The boxes are carefully crafted with thin mirror so that mitered joints are not visible and the illusion of reality can persist.
As the artist has stated: "In old-school carving, you have a view on each side of a block, and you cut that out, and it basically makes the shape. This is what this is. It's just a minimal way of having a space that something occupies in the room without having it there. But it makes the space it occupies much more aggressive than with the real thing. I don't know if it's technical or not. Do you care if your fridge has a microchip in it or not? Not really."
Urs Fischer was born in Zurich,1973, and lives and works in New York. His work is included in numerous public and private collections, and solo exhibitions have been recently presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2013; Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 2012; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, 2012; Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut, 2olo; New Museum, New York, 2009; and Gagosian Gallery, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, and Rome.
RICHARD D. MARSHALL, Curator
URS FISCHER
CROOKER/CREAGH/CRANOR/CRANER, 2012
SMITH/JOHNSON/WILLIAMS/JONES, 2012
ROTHENBERG/MCCLUSKY, 2012
KITTINGER/ZAWACKI/YUTZY, 2012
THEODOR/BERNICE/MAUREEN, 2013
FRANÇOIS/RENÉ, 2013
CEOLLE/BRENDA/ERICA, 2013
MARIE-LOUISE/MANDY, 2013
ALTENBURGER/SCHNEIDERMINKLER, 2013
Nine units of two to four boxes each, twenty-six pieces total; each silkscreen print on mirror-glass, UV adhesive, aluminum, glass, polyacetal, and screws; dimensions variable