Press release—Urs Fischer at Gagosian Madison Avenue, New York
Opening reception: Tuesday, May 15, 6–8pm
May 3–June 23, 2018
980 Madison Avenue, New York
Art is open—it can go on endlessly.
—Urs Fischer
Gagosian is pleased to present Sōtatsu, an exhibition of new paintings by Urs Fischer.
Resisting any single mode of representation, Fischer pushes the limits of line, color, and shape through surprising and provocative materials and subjects. In his cast sculptures and assemblages, paintings, digital montages, spatial installations, and kinetic objects, he ceaselessly mines the intersection where art meets everyday life. He has built houses out of bread, enlivened empty space with mechanistic jokes, deconstructed objects and then replicated them, and transferred other objects from three dimensions to two and back again via photographic processes.
Sōtatsu comprises a suite of nine paintings in which Fischer further explores the ways that space and gesture can be divided, stretched, opened, and closed—creating a panorama that is as continuous as it is fragmented. Inspired by the hand scrolls and painted screens of early seventeenth-century Japanese artist Tawaraya Sōtatsu, Fischer’s interior landscapes use negative space, light, and repetition to evoke time and movement. Sōtatsu, one of Fischer’s favorite artists, was a cofounder of the Rinpa school, which promoted a return to traditional Japanese subjects—such as gardens, cranes, the four seasons, and references to famous poems—while incorporating shimmering metallic backgrounds, bold colors, and images intersecting with calligraphic text.
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