Urs Fischer studied photography at the Zurich University of the Arts in 1991, before dropping out. Further training and scholarship at the independent academy De Ateliers in Amsterdam, 1993–1998. Artist-in-residence at Delfina Studios in London, 2000. Awards and grants (selection): Binz39 studio residency, Zurich, 1995; Swiss Art Award, 1995 and 1999; Kiefer Hablitzel grant, 1997; Providentia Young Art Prize, Zurich, 1999; Prize of the Böttcherstrasse, Bremen, 2003. First exhibition in 1996, at Galerie Walcheturm, Zurich. Numerous exhibitions in Switzerland and abroad from 2000 onwards. Solo exhibitions (selection): Tagessuppen / Soups of the Days and Domestic Pairs Project, Kunsthaus Glarus, 2000; Kir Royal, Kunsthaus Zurich, 2004; Not My House, Not My Fire, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2004; get up girl a sun is running the world, Chiesa San Stae, 51st Biennale di Venezia (with Ugo Rondinone), 2007; Marguerite de Ponty, New Museum, New York, 2009; Skinny Sunrise, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, 2012; Urs Fischer, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2016; The Lyrical and the Prosaic, Aïshti Foundation, Beirut, 2019; Lovers, Museo Jumex, Mexico City, 2022. Up until 2006, Urs Fischer lived intermittently in various places, such as London and Los Angeles, and shared a studio in Berlin and New York with artist Rudolf Stingel of South Tyrol. Since 2006, Urs Fischer has been living in New York and, from 2020 onwards, also in Los Angeles.

Urs Fischer uses the multifaceted potential of materials and things, such as clay, steel, wax, paint, food, furniture, and images from art history or the media, to create works that fascinate and irritate in equal measure via transformation of the familiar. Using scale distortions, illusions and the juxtaposition of everyday objects, his paintings, sculptures, photographs and large-scale installations explore themes of perception and representation, presence and absence, life and death, kitsch and consumerism – often with an ironic or witty undertone.

Food is an important element of Fischer’s work. Left to actually decompose, it is contrasted with durable materials: Rotten Foundation (1998) consists of a brick wall built on rotting fruit and vegetables; a Swiss chalet made entirely from loaves of bread is left for parakeets to eat (Untitled (Bread House), 2004–2005). In Problem Paintings (2011 onwards), portraits printed on aluminium panels are obscured by vivid representations of eggs, vegetables and fruit, whereby the use of everyday food opens up a wide range of associations, from pleasure and sensuality to famine and overeating.

With their transience and liquefaction, his candle sculptures, produced from 2001 onwards, elude art’s aspirations of permanence and simultaneously symbolise entropy, matter’s disappearance, and our human mortality. At the 54th Biennale di Venezia in 2011, this artist melted down true-to-scale wax copies of Giambologna’s The Rape of the Sabine (1581–1583), his friend Rudolf Stingel and his studio chair, thus dissolving notions of classical sculpture and statues (Untitled). In 2006, Fischer began to work in the opposite direction under the title Big Clay, first shaping small abstract hand-sized pieces in clay, which would then, as metal shapes in outdoor spaces, result in monumental primitive-looking sculptures, such as Lovers #2 in front of Museo Jumex in Mexico City in 2022, or Big Clay #4, a thirteen-metre-high aluminium-and-steel sculpture in Florence in 2017.

More recently, Fischer has incorporated more participatory elements and material challenges, producing artworks characterised by interplay between complexity and playfulness, as well as between chaos and perfection. In his ongoing project YES (from 2011 onwards, in Moscow, Leeds, Hydra etc.), Fischer invites interested visitors to make objects and sculptures out of clay and thus become part of a collaborative creative process. In 2012, a high point was reached in The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, where 1,500 volunteers produced a plethora of unfired clay sculptures in the weeks leading up to the exhibition. In New York, the artist presented Bliss (2017), a giant bust of singer Katy Perry, made of modelling clay. The public was allowed to remove the coloured clay from the sculpture, thus destroying it, but to then add it again wherever they wanted, creating a new form. Fischer has also been taking a collaborative approach in HEADZ, a series of workshop-like events in New York, Berlin and Paris (from 2017 onwards), in which people draw and design together while enjoying live music and food.

Urs Fischer’s œuvre defies categorical classification, as is reflected by his choice of materials, techniques and styles. This artist eclectically integrates elements of art history and pop culture, playfully crossing the boundaries between craft and art, and between creation and appropriation. The goal is not any clear interpretation, but rather a planned irritation of aesthetic experiences – via combinations that range from the bizarre to the absurd, which are meant to trigger unexpected emotional reactions in the observer. In order to achieve the desired quality of execution and technical precision for his sometimes enormously elaborate artworks, Fischer usually works with specialised partners, such as the art foundry Kunstgiesserei St Gallen or Chinese metalwork companies. Fischer’s interventions in existing spaces are also spectacular, for instance when he reshapes exhibition halls, fundamentally changing how they appear and are perceived. His 2007 piece You attracted considerable attention: For this, he had the floor of the New York gallery Gavin Brown’s Enterprise torn up and a metre-deep hole dug out, which could be entered at one’s own risk.

One creative and technical highlight is the artwork PLAY (2018), at the interface between sculpture, performance, artificial intelligence (AI) and choreography (by Madeline Hollander), involving interaction with nine office chairs in a kind of arena. Programmed by experts, PLAY is given a life of its own: The chairs act as participatory counterparts, seemingly communicating in motion, while the visitors in the room help to shape the choreography.

In 2019 and 2021, Fischer collaborated with the fashion label Louis Vuitton (on bag appendages and monogram design) and began to work on digital objects. Denominator (2020‒2022), a cube of LED screens, combines fragmented individual shots from promotional videos. CHAOƧ #501 marks the end, for the time being, of a series of digitally generated sculptures realised during the corona pandemic and released as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). CHAOS #1–#500 are unique pieces, each comprising a pair of interpenetrating, seemingly fluid objects in constant rotation.

Urs Fischer’s latest projects deal with all kinds of artefacts left behind by humanity, as well as with the enormous flood of images, the matter and the things that are being produced, changed and cultivated, and that are cluttering up the planet. His multi-layered works convey both curiosity and passion with regard to our increasingly questionable existence, and often come across as humorous. At the same time, in his playful reinterpretation of forms, materials, spaces and relationships, profound melancholy also appears as a driving force behind bliss.

Works in public institutions (selection): Kunstmuseum Basel; Burger Collection, Berlin; Vanhaerents Art Collection, Brussels; Peter Brant Foundation, Connecticut (USA); Kunsthaus Glarus; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; François Pinault Collection, Paris/Venice; Kunsthaus Zurich; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich; Canton of Zurich Art Collection; City of Zurich Art Collection.