Tag Archives: urs fischer

URS FISCHER: BIG CLAY #4

Urs Fischer’s “Big Clay #4” rises in Midtown (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Seagram Building
375 Park Ave. between 52nd & 53rd Sts.
Through September 1, free
www.gagosian.com
big clay #4 slideshow

Four years ago, Zurich-born, New York-based artist Urs Fischer installed “Untitled (Lamp/Bear),” a twenty-three-foot-tall, nearly twenty-ton cuddly yellow teddy bear wearing a working lamp for a hat on the plaza in front of Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building on Park Ave.; the piece sold at auction that summer for more than $6.8 million. Fischer has now returned to that triumphant location with “Big Clay #4,” a forty-two-and-a-half-foot-tall aluminum sculpture of a piece of squeezed clay, complete with the artist’s fingerprints. When the piece was being installed, a printout of plans left near construction materials on the plaza showed the ultimate sculpture (actually for “Big Clay #3”) in multiple colors, reminiscent of Jeff Koons’s “Play-Doh” from his recent Whitney retrospective. But alas, the colors were just to help identify which section went where; the final sculpture is plain silver, twisted metal rising like the Midtown skyscrapers surrounding it, though not quite as orderly. Fischer, who has worked with such materials as bread, wax, and vegetables, here goes back to the very source, a small lump of clay that he squeezed, scanned, digitally enlarged, and now has cast for all to see but not touch.

ZÜRICH MEETS NEW YORK: A FESTIVAL OF SWISS INGENUITY

Zürich Meets New York festival honors upcoming centennial of the Dada movement

Multiple locations
May 16-23, free – $20
www.zurichmeetsnewyork.org

In The Third Man, one of the greatest movies ever made, Harry Lime (Orson Welles) tells his childhood friend Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), “You know what the fellow said — in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace — and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” Of course, Switzerland has contributed a whole lot more to international culture and history than the cuckoo clock — and by the way, who doesn’t love the cuckoo clock? — as evidenced by this month’s Zürich Meets New York: A Festival of Swiss Ingenuity. From May 16 to 23, more than two dozen events will be taking place around the city, from concerts and dance to panel discussions and film screenings, from art exhibits and seminars to theater and scientific conversations, with a particular focus on the one hundredth anniversary of the Dada movement, which was born at the Cabaret Voltaire. Aside from “How Black Holes Shape Our Universe,” a multimedia presentation at the Explorers Club that requires a $20 ticket, everything else is absolutely free, although most events require advance RSVP. Below are only some of the highlights; other participants and programs include Dieter Meier of Yello, game developer Tim Schafer, Jungian analyst Christopher Hauke, complexity scientist Dirk Helbing, financial economist Didier Sornette, IBM director of research John E. Kelly, novelists Renata Adler and Ben Marcus discussing the work of Max Frisch, and a pair of documentaries about artist Urs Fischer.

Friday, May 16
“Collegium Novum Zurich: Live Music & Silent Films,” David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, Broadway between 62nd & 63rd Sts., featuring screenings of shorts by Hans Richter, James Sibley Watson Jr. and Melville Webber, René Clair, and Joris Ivens with live musical accompaniment, free with advance RSVP, 7:00

Saturday, May 17
“Giants Are Small: Dada Bomb,” Dada performance art journey, free with advance RSVP, 7:00

Sunday, May 18
through
Thursday, May 22
“Dada on Tour,” art exhibition in a “nomadic” tent, Whitebox Art Center, 329 Broome St. between Chrystie St. & Bowery, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm

Monday, May 19
“What Can Robots and Economics Teach Us About Humanity?,” with Rolf Pfeifer and Ernst Fehr, moderated by Maria Konnikova, New York Academy of Sciences, 7 World Trade Center, 250 Greenwich St., 40th Floor, free with advance RSVP, 7:00

Monday, May 19
through
Thursday, May 22
“Dada Pop-Up: The Absurdities of Our Times,” opening will include spontaneous performances and exchanges, Whitebox Art Center, 329 Broome St. between Chrystie St. & Bowery, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm

Tuesday, May 20
and
Wednesday, May 21
“Simone Aughterlony/Antonija Livingstone/Hahn Rowe: In Disguise,” dance performance with choreographer Simone Aughterlony, performer Antonija Livingstone, and composer Hahn Rowe, the Kitchen, 512 West 19th St. between Tenth and Eleventh Aves., free with advance RSVP, 8:30

URS FISCHER

Urs Fischer’s “last supper” inaugurates new Gagosian uptown space (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

LAST SUPPER
Gagosian Gallery, Park & 75
821 Park Ave. at 75th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 8, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.gagosian.com
twi-ny online slideshow

Last year at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, in conjunction with a major career survey, Swiss-born, New York City–based artist Urs Fischer created the sprawling sculptural installation “YES,” working with 1,500 volunteers for three weeks on-site to turn 308 tons of clay into all kinds of representational and abstract shapes and figures of their own choosing. Fischer has now taken select parts of the unfired final product, warts and all, and cast them in unpatinated and gilded bronze. The centerpiece of the project is a large-scale “last supper,” a life-size version of Jesus leading a seder that inaugurates Gagosian’s airy new small space, Park & 75. The clay food on the table includes McDonald’s French fries, fruit, cans of beer and “malt licker,” a hot dog in a bun, a slice of pizza, and a chicken. The apostles are joined by miniature people, a boxy smiley face, a rat crawling on a head, a wad of cash, and some playing cards, among other items that probably weren’t part of the actual dinner in which Jesus revealed that he was about to be betrayed. Fischer leaves in every crack and fissure, every hand- and footprint used to mold the work, which still appears to be made out of malleable clay. It is meant to be an outdoor piece, where the weather can further change it over time, but it currently sits perpendicular to Park Ave. in Gagosian’s windowed room, where curious passersby stop in for a look.

Urs Fischer has placed a host of objects and figures throughout former bank on Delancey St. (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

MERMAID / PIG / BRO W/ HAT
104 Delancey St.
821 Park Ave. at 75th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 23, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.gagosian.com
twi-ny online slideshow

Meanwhile, Fischer and Gagosian have populated an abandoned downtown bank with dozens of other cast-bronze pieces from the original “YES” installation, carefully — and often humorously — placing them throughout the various rooms. A miniature bed resides in front of a vault; a one-legged boy relaxes across a chair; a chained lion sits in a corner; a wildly mustached Napoleon bust stands behind a counter, as if about to take care of a customer; train tracks emerge from a fireplace; a mermaid dribbles water into a fountain; and a giant, disembodied foot waits in the back. Perhaps most relevant is a gold sculpture of a man having sexual relations with a pig; this was a bank, after all.

You can reflect on Fischer’s mirrored boxes at Lever House (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

UNTITLED
Lever House Art Collection
390 Park Ave. at 54th St.
Through May 30, free
www.leverhouseartcollection.com
twi-ny online slideshow

In addition to the uptown and downtown Gagosian shows, nine of Fischer’s mirrored-boxes-on-pedestals aggregrations can be found at Lever House, across the street from where his giant lamp bear sat back in the fall of 2011. Fischer has silkscreened photographic images on four sides and the top of mirrored cubes of varying dimensions and placed them on white plinths; most of the images do not completely cover the surfaces, so the plants, traffic on Park Ave., and other elements are reflected on many sides, giving them a surreal, Magritte-like quality. The images include a pencil, chess pieces, a bottle of soy sauce, a banana, an alarm clock, a level, a box of mints, a camera, and a twenty-dollar bill. Virtually everything about the show is random, from the shapes and sizes to the positioning and organization to which objects were photographed and how. Much like the downtown Gagosian show equates an art gallery with a bank, this collection turns the gallery into a kind of very clean, austere store, which also evokes the Lever Brothers themselves, who made their fortune in soap.

If all of that’s not quite enough Urs Fischer for you, then you can catch two free documentaries May 19-21 at the SVA Theatre as part of the Zürich Meets New York festival, Iwan Schumacher’s Urs Fischer, about the artist’s 2009-10 solo show at the New Museum, and Feuer und Flamme (The Art Foundry), in which Schumacher reveals the working process of Fischer as well as Katharina Fritsch, Peter Fischli, and David Weiss at Kunstgiesserei St. Gallen.

URS FISCHER: UNTITLED (LAMP/BEAR)

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
www.christies.com
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.