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Urs Fischer

Fountains

September 15–October 17, 2015
Beverly Hills

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Installation video

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Joshua White

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Joshua White

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Joshua White

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Joshua White

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Joshua White

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Joshua White

Installation view Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Joshua White

Installation view

Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Joshua White

Works Exhibited

Urs Fischer, TBD, 2015 Aluminum panel, aramid honeycomb, two-component polyurethane adhesive, two-component epoxy primer, galvanized steel rivet nuts, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic silkscreen medium, and acrylic paint, 132 ½ × 106 × ⅞ inches (336.6 × 269.2 × 2.2 cm)© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, TBD, 2015

Aluminum panel, aramid honeycomb, two-component polyurethane adhesive, two-component epoxy primer, galvanized steel rivet nuts, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic silkscreen medium, and acrylic paint, 132 ½ × 106 × ⅞ inches (336.6 × 269.2 × 2.2 cm)
© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, Magnesium, 2015 Aluminum panel, aramid honeycomb, two-component polyurethane adhesive, two-component epoxy primer, galvanized steel rivet nuts, steel screws, steel dowels, washers, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic silkscreen medium, acrylic paint, 130 × 162 ¼ × ⅞ inches (330 × 412 × 2.1 cm)© Urs Fischer, photo by Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, Magnesium, 2015

Aluminum panel, aramid honeycomb, two-component polyurethane adhesive, two-component epoxy primer, galvanized steel rivet nuts, steel screws, steel dowels, washers, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic silkscreen medium, acrylic paint, 130 × 162 ¼ × ⅞ inches (330 × 412 × 2.1 cm)
© Urs Fischer, photo by Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, TBD, 2015 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, 96 × 76 ¾ × ⅞ inches (243.8 × 194.9 × 2.2 cm)© Urs Fischer, photo by Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, TBD, 2015

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, 96 × 76 ¾ × ⅞ inches (243.8 × 194.9 × 2.2 cm)
© Urs Fischer, photo by Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, TBD, 2015 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, 96 × 76 ¾ × ⅞ inches (243.8 × 194.9 × 2.2 cm)© Urs Fischer, photo by Mats Nordman

Urs Fischer, TBD, 2015

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, 96 × 76 ¾ × ⅞ inches (243.8 × 194.9 × 2.2 cm)
© Urs Fischer, photo by Mats Nordman

About

Gagosian Beverly Hills is pleased to announce an exhibition of sculptures and paintings by Urs Fischer.

Constantly searching for new sculptural solutions, Fischer has an uncanny ability to envisage and produce objects undergoing psychic transformation in a bewildering range of materials. Compacting the real with the mimetic, order with disorder, he combines daring formal adventures in space, scale, and material with a mordant sense of humor. In recent years, 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, this exhibition is conceived around fully functional fountains, “active sculptures” that transform the galleries into humid and energized places through which viewers can wander, as if in a town square. The lumpen fountains are cast in brass from hand-built clay models; the rims of the water basins are powder-coated white, while the base is left as raw roseate metal. In one gallery, a sort of roughly formed, almost naturalistic blowhole spouts water, splashing merrily and drowning out all other sound; in the other, water hisses from a misting ball, and spills down over two tiered basins. A third fountain, also in cast brass and delicately powder-coated in parts, is a human skeleton arched across a chair over which a draped garden hose gently flows—the latest in Fischer’s lexicon of darkly humorous vanitas.

Surrounding the fountains in the galleries are huge paintings in both portrait and landscape formats. The background of each painting is actually a photographic image of Fischer’s own face or features thereof, but where any temptation toward self-referentiality is pushed to near-obscurity or total disintegration. These motifs are blown up and overlaid with silkscreened marks that were first painted or drawn by Fischer, in a palette alternately sober and vivid. Like the Problem Paintings before them, these layered images provide a fresh and subversive view through the clash of representational systems and different cosmic orders.

In the midst of California’s severe drought, Gagosian joins Governor Jerry Brown and the City of Beverly Hills in the commitment to responsible and efficient water use. The three artworks with water features included in Urs Fischer’s Fountains exhibition have been engineered to maximize water conservation. Installed indoors, with minimal loss from evaporation, they utilize self-contained recycling systems. The water will be purchased from an external source and it will be reused at the conclusion of the exhibition. In total, the projected water usage for the four-week exhibition is about three hundred gallons of water, which is less than the average daily use of a single household (as estimated by the EPA).

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