Urs Fischer’s (b. 1973) attitude towards making art is at once humble and dramatic; characterised by a playful, almost Surrealist approach, he transforms everyday imagery into powerful works that are both unique and unexpected. Encompassing drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, and large-scale installations, the artist resists formal categorisation, moving unpredictably through materials, genres and motifs, to test the limits of what it means to make, display, and view works of art.
‘The challenge in discussing Fischer’s oeuvre is how best to categorize work that appears, initially at least, to be immensely varied. Moving beyond technique, imagery, or technology, however, it is possible to think about his production in relation to types of space, both real and imagined, from which the work may have emerged or with which it may be closely associated. Three overlapping spheres can be defined: the studio, the exterior or public space of images and objects, and the realm of fantasy or the fictional. It is in part the movement between these three zones, or the treatment of something from one realm in the manner of another, that creates the friction and liminal quality in Fischer’s work, where things, images, and materials seem not to behave as we might expect them to.’
J. Morgan, Inside, Outside, and Out There in Urs Fischer, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2013
