Tour
Urs Fischer
Leo
Wednesday, December 11, 2019, 6:30pm
Gagosian, Paris
Journalist and curator Judith Benhamou-Huet will lead a tour of the exhibition Urs Fischer: Leo at Gagosian, Paris. In Fischer’s work, the processes of material creation and destruction are often explored through the use of impermanent materials. Fischer’s candle sculptures, which he began to make in the early 2000s, exemplify this relationship. The artist’s newest candle portrait, Leo (George & Irmelin) (2019), depicts Leonardo DiCaprio with his parents, George DiCaprio and Irmelin Indenbirken. As with all of Fischer’s candle sculptures, Leo (George & Irmelin) will melt slowly over the course of the exhibition, its original composition transmuted into a form dictated by the wayward laws of physics. To attend the free event, RSVP to paristours@gagosian.com. Space is limited.
#UrsFischerLeo
Installation view, Urs Fischer: Leo, Gagosian, Paris, October 14–December 20, 2019. Artwork © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger
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Installation
Urs Fischer
Rose
Urs Fischer’s painting Rose (2024) is on view in the vitrine at Gagosian, rue de Ponthieu, Paris, as part of the artist’s exhibition Beauty at the rue de Castiglione gallery.
In 2010, Fischer began the Problem Paintings series, layering vivid screen-printed images of familiar objects and organic forms—from fixtures and fittings to fruits and vegetables—over precisely rendered enlargements of vintage Hollywood headshots. Rose belongs to this series and shows a glamorous screen actor wearing red lipstick, her face partially obscured by a luscious pink rose with a bright green stem and leaves. The juxtaposition enacts a playful conflict between clarity and secrecy, aesthetic experimentation and symbolic meaning. Evoking the cryptological messaging of Victorian floriography, Rose confronts the viewer with a mischievous, perhaps unsolvable visual conundrum.
Urs Fischer, Rose, 2024 © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger
Installation
Urs Fischer
Candyfloss
October 12–November 28, 2023
Gagosian, rue de Ponthieu, Paris
Urs Fischer’s painting Candyfloss (2023) is on view in the street-facing vitrine at Gagosian, rue de Ponthieu, Paris, presented along with the artist’s monumental sculpture Wave (2018) at Place Vendôme in Paris as part of Paris+ par Art Basel.
Candyfloss is one of the latest works in Fischer’s series of Problem Paintings, which he began in 2010. In this series, the artist formulates incongruous pairings of photographic portraits with vibrantly colored screenprinted images of inanimate objects. In Candyfloss, Fischer overlays an enlarged picture of a cerise-pink daisy on a digitally altered headshot of a Hollywood actress, obscuring her identity through the blossom’s placement. The visual “problem” resulting from this friction between illegibility and possibility—and from the clash of representational systems suggested by the flower’s mysteriously improbable shadow—is at once surprising and darkly humorous.
Urs Fischer, Candyfloss, 2023 © Urs Fischer
Public Installation
Urs Fischer
Wave
October 14–November 30, 2023
Place Vendôme, Paris
Gagosian is pleased to present Urs Fischer’s public sculpture Wave (2018). The work will be installed at Place Vendôme in Paris from October 14 as part of Paris+ par Art Basel.
Wave is the sixth sculpture in Fischer’s series Big Clays. Despite their imposing scale, these works always begin with a small piece or pieces of clay shaped in the artist’s hand. Fischer describes this process as “a sensual and repetitive gesture, like a bodily motion,” which he ends prior to conscious intervention. After making hundreds of such forms, he selects only one to be digitally scanned and carved at an enlarged scale. Unlike a cast form or a digital replica, the resulting work preserves the nuanced tactility of the original maquette, magnifying its details—down to the artist’s fingerprints—into a monument.
Urs Fischer, Wave, 2018, installation view, Place Vendôme, Paris © Urs Fischer. Photo: Stefan Altenburger
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