Urs Fischer, “Untitled (Lamp/Bear),” cast bronze, epoxy primer, urethane paint, acrylic polyurethane topcoat, acrylic glass, gas discharge lamp, and stainless-steel framework, 2005-6 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Seagram Building
375 Park Ave. between 52nd & 53rd Sts.
Through September 30, free
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lamp/bear slideshow
Born in Switzerland in 1973, New York-based bad-boy artist Urs Fischer combines photography, sculpture, and installation art in his oeuvre, making holes in gallery and museum walls and floors, manipulating perception and playing with the experience of, well, experiencing art. His 2009-10 show at the New Museum, “Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty,” was met with skepticism in some corners, with numerous critics arguing it was a significant conflict of interest, since museum trustee Dakis Joannou is a major collector of Fischer’s work. Perhaps Fischer is putting such controversy behind him with his latest installation, a huge, cuddly yellow teddy-bear lamp perched in front of the Mies van der Rohe-designed Seagram Building on Park Ave. in Midtown. The twenty-three-foot-tall, thirty-five-thousand-pound 2005-6 cast bronze piece (with a stainless-steel interior) is being showcased for Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Evening Sale on May 11, where it is expected to go for about $10 million; while “Untitled (Lamp/Bear)” might not quite be what the auction house is calling “one of the great sculptural masterpieces of our time,” it is a wholly endearing, playful, and provocative work of childhood memory, complete with floppy arms and legs (and one ear), that actually functions as a night-light, turning on in the evening. The May 11 sale will also feature works by Roy Lichtenstein, Mark Rothko, Cindy Sherman, Alexander Calder, Philip Guston, Richard Prince, Robert Rauschenberg, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning, and Jeff Koons, among many others.