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The Arts Intel Report

Urs Fischer: Beauty

Urs Fischer, White Tulip, 2024.

Mar 5 – May 25, 2024
4 Rue de Ponthieu, 75008 Paris, France

“Fischer’s own art, like Fischer himself, is highly memorable but hard to pin down,” wrote Calvin Tomkins in The New Yorker, in 2009. The Swiss artist Urs Fischer has never limited himself to one medium, let alone one style or scale. Instead he’ll make a massive cast-bronze bear sitting under a lamp, or a 12-foot cube of LEDs, or a sculpture of melting wax. Often playing with perspective and distortion, Fischer both humors and confuses the viewer. In this exhibition, he sticks to two dimensions, presenting new works from his series “Problem Paintings.” The series combines contrasting objects and categories, questioning their relationship. The new pieces feature publicity headshots of the actresses Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, and Gene Tierney, partly hidden by silkscreened images of flowers. Themes of glamour and fame combine with the sexual and romantic associations of floriography. —Jeanne Malle