URS FISCHER
Urs Fischer has hit the ground running. Now based in New York, the Swiss artist has achieved great international success in recent years with his drawings, objects and installations. Still in his mid thirties, Fischer exhibits internationally in prestigious galleries, and procures budgets enabling him to realise gigantic projects – such as sculptures the size of buildings.
The film reveals him as an artist who derives his creative energy from the tension of polarities and extreme contradictions. Urs Fischer, as hedonist and workaholic, swings between traditional art and pop culture, spontaneity and high-tech precision. Again and again, in his two or three dimensional works, he achieves a synthesis between apparent contradictions.
The film is structured around the currant pinnacle of Fischer’s career – his first one-man show in an American Art Museum: in the New Museum, New York City, October 2009. It records the preparation and opening of this event, interweaving this with intriguing images of previous works and exhibitions in locations such as Venice, London, Sydney, Zurich and Shanghai. The viewer can explore the complex creative process that lies behind an exhibition, experiencing the pressure under which an international artist works. And at the same time uncover the concrete practicalities of making art works in a global situation, while participating in an art market dealing in sums of many millions.