Urs Fischer - Work

Work

Born in 1973, Urs Fischer began his career in Switzerland where he studied photography at the Schule fur Gestaltung, Zurich. He moved to Amsterdam in 1993 and had his first solo show at a gallery in Zurich, in 1996. Fischers subversive approach to art is often considered to be influenced by anti-art movements like Neo-Dada, Lost Art or the Situationist International. Since Fischer began showing his work, in the mid-nineteen-nineties, in Europe, he has produced an enormous number of objects, drawings, collages, and room-size installations.

In Untitled (Bread House) (2004-1005), Fischer constructed a Swiss style chalet entirely out of loaves of bread. His Bad Timing, Lamb Chop! (2004-2005), displays a giant wooden chair straddling a half empty packet of cigarettes. Between 2005 and 2006, he created Untitled (Lamp/Bear), an edition of three 23-foot-tall, 20-ton, fluorescent-yellow bronze bears with generic Bakelite lamps springing out of their heads; in 2011, one of the pieces was displayed for five months at Seagram Building's plaza before being auctioned at Christie's. For his 2007 show at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Fischer excavated the gallery’s main room, bringing in contractors to dig an eight-foot hole where the floor had been, and calling the result You. In Death of a Moment (2007), two entire walls are equipped with floor-to-ceiling mirrors and set in motion by a hydraulic system, to create the surreal effect of a room in flux, morphing in shape and size.