NEW YORK, NY.- Gagosian is presenting an exhibition of new work by Urs Fischer in New York, coinciding with his presentation at the Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles.
Denominator features three new projects: Denominator (2020–22), a large sculpture composed of LED screens; People (2022), an installation based on a room at the National Gallery, London; and CHAOƧ #501, the culmination of the CHAOƧ series of digital sculptures.
Denominator is a 12-foot cube constructed from LED screens that display a sequence of fragments from international television commercials in a shifting composition that spans the history of the medium. Through the use of AI algorithms, the commercials have been deconstructed into individual shots, which are then grouped by theme or color and displayed in layered patterns and choreographed sequences.
People is a full-scale recontextualization of room 43 of the National Gallery, overlaid with a 360-degree projection of heads sourced from online videos. In this installation, the turn-of-the-century museum interior becomes a medium, illuminating occidental culture at the moment of its decoupling from institutional power and transforming it into an individualized form of expression, the projected heads representing thousands of people in the act of sharing their opinions with remote audiences.
CHAOƧ #501 is the culmination of a multiyear series of digital sculptures. The inaugural visualization on view in New York is a two-dimensional rendering—displayed on a 14-by-30-foot 8K wall display—in which all one thousand digital objects from the CHAOƧ series move independently of each other through a defined space. Each element in the CHAOƧ series is based on an everyday object that has undergone a metamorphosis from physical to digital existence through a variety of scanning processes. The details and imperfections found in the physical world are intentionally preserved.
Together, the objects assembled in CHAOƧ #501 form a subjective encyclopedic composition that tells the story of humanity through the artifacts it leaves behind. We primarily interact with matter that has been altered, cultivated, engineered, or manufactured, and as we fill the planet with new products, the variety of flora, fauna, and funga diminishes.
Urs Fischer was born in Zurich and lives and works in New York. Collections include the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Fondation Carmignac, Paris; Vanhaerents Art Collection, Brussels; Kunstmuseum Basel; FRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Marseille, France; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich; and Museo d’arte della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano, Switzerland. Exhibitions include Marguerite de Ponty, New Museum, New York (2009–10); 54th Biennale di Venezia (2011); Skinny Sunrise, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2012); Madame Fisscher, Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2012); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2013); YES, DESTE Foundation Project Space, Slaughterhouse, Hydra, Greece (2013); Small Axe, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2013); Mon cher..., Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, Arles, France (2016); The Public & the Private, Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (2017); The Lyrical and the Prosaic, Aïshti Foundation, Beirut (2019–20); Lovers, Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2022); and PLAY, Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2022).
