Urs Fischer - New Now New York Wednesday, September 26, 2018 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Sadie Coles HQ, London
    Private Collection
    Acquired from the above by the present owner

  • Exhibited

    London, Sadie Coles HQ, Douglas Sirk, October 6 - December 11, 2010
    Los Angeles, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Urs Fischer, New York, 2013, p. 146 (another example exhibited and illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    In Salt/Sandra, Urs Fischer has perfected his creation of the dissected, three-dimensional image/sculpture, challenging the viewer’s perception of the traditional scopes of sculpture and photography. A stellar example from one of the artist’s most celebrated series, Salt/Sandra recalls Fischer’s first mirrored boxes from the renowned installation Service à la Française at the New Museum in 2009. The installation consisted of 51 polished stainless steel boxes placed seemingly at random on the second floor, printed with vibrant colored images of various everyday objects, at once celebrating both Pop and Minimalist aesthetics. This exhibition was the artist’s first major solo presentation in an American museum, helping to solidify the Swiss multi-disciplinary artist’s international status.

    Executed just one year later in 2010, Salt/Sandra features four large-scale stainless steel structures with printed images of a fox mask and a chair. Placed directly on the floor, the four boxes confront the viewer with the objects at approximately eye-level. Fischer has reproduced the chair approximately life-size, while paradoxically enlarging the fox mask to an unrealistic scale, establishing a unique dialogue between fiction and reality. Evident in the exacting precision with which the silkscreens have been applied, the artist’s method of production is central to the work’s effect. As the viewer walks through the installation, he or she confronts these three-dimensional object-images, discovering their un-reality and dysfunctionality and simultaneously highly mimetic quality. As such, the present lot transcends the boundaries of the sculptural discipline. On the occasion of the artist’s 2012 exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi, Patricia Falguières espoused, “Fischer’s sculpture operates by subtraction. It rarefies: against the flux of images poured out by the Internet or by the media, sculpture is, inherently, a strategy of selection and rarefaction of images…In every piece by Fischer, sculpture is announced” (Patricia Falguières, “Urs Hero: Portrait de l’artiste en jeune homme”, in Urs Fischer: Madame Fisscher, exh. cat., Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 2012, pp. 38-39). Indeed, Salt/Sandra is a striking installation that perfectly manifests the hallmarks of Fischer’s practice, highlighting the artist’s prowess as a master of many mediums.

55

Salt/Sandra

silkscreen print on mirror-polished stainless steel sheets, polyurethane foam sheets, two-component polyurethane adhesive, stainless steel beams, aluminum L sections, screws, in 4 parts
Fox mask, each 57 1/2 x 42 1/2 x 64 1/8 in. (146.1 x 108 x 162.9 cm.)
Green chair, each 42 1/8 x 32 1/4 x 35 3/8 in. (107 x 81.9 x 89.9 cm.)

Executed in 2010, this work is number 1 from an edition of 2 plus 1 artist's proof.

Estimate
$300,000 - 500,000 

Contact Specialist
Sam Mansour
Associate Specialist, Head of New Now Sale
New York
+1 212 940 1219
smansour@phillips.com

New Now

New York Auction 26 September 2018