Urs Fischer at Gavin Brown’s enterprise (sadly ended, but worth posting)
What will he think of next? Urs Fischer’s almost schizophrenic practice keeps me guessing. Anyone knowledgeable of Fischer’s work knows the breadth of form he is keen to engage. To date it would seem he has employed a throng of apparent randomness: a crescent moon-shaped croissant acting as a butterfly’s respite, a pastel colored melting piano, an active tongue, precariously suspended amorphous aluminum blobs, oversized photographic prints simulating dimensional form, just to scratch the surface. The magnificence of his work, though, lies in the deliberateness with which this variety is presented. Schizophrenic? Yes. Unfocused? Not even slightly.
As he is so skillfully apt to do, Fischer’s most recent exhibition at Gavin Brown’s enterprise spins one’s assumptions on a most familiar and quotidian object: the table. He’s reconsidered the “small personal universe over which we talk, eat, plan our future, pay our bills and raise our children.” It’s an equally important surface for artistic production. The tables’ surfaces are overwhelmed with amalgamations of images from endless sources of popular culture, timeless and diverse. As is customary, his nod to the art historical precedent from which the context of his work has evolved is present. Most poignantly and hilariously so, two themes jointly commanded with masterful technique by Fischer, in Misunderstood Pollock, depicting a hermaphrodite second life-esque character whose ejaculate is merged seamlessly with the splatters of paint in one of Pollock’s paintings. Whether or not this is a thankful and reverent nod is debatable.
What is most intriguing to consider, however, is the progression of Fischer’s work as it relates specifically to the interior space of Gavin Brown’s enterprise. His previous exhibition at GBe was comprised of a massive floor extraction, the subtraction of material to form a giant pit. The floor has since been covered over, but as Fischer is quick to state “Beneath our feet is an inverted pyramid of excavated earth. It is the cup. The martini glass that will hold our DNA.” He is asserting this universally, but also with a narrower reference to this specific exhibition space. While it might be a reach to suppose such a thing, one could reason that Fischer is forming concurrent exhibits like the sediment layers he so recently disrupted. He is quite literally defining his work from the ground up. From the floor, or the lack of a floor, he’s jumped to its nearest parallel surface. So what is on Fischer’s horizon is anyone’s guess. And this, I believe, is the ideal place to conclude any analysis of his work: having an appreciation for what has been seen and an inability to predict what is still to come. Fischer makes me revel in the present.
Adam Stoves
