excerpt
« My first encounter with Fischer's pictures, sculptures and, of course, with him, came as a surprise. The
sculpture, made of wax and painted, looked something like a figurehead. And it was burning. The result was
hideous and funny at once. And the work had not been destroyed; it had been created. And destroyed. A
conundrum, released and resolved in such a compelling, crude and sensitive fashion that it leaves us speechless
with astonishment. The pictures are curiously constructed out of numerous layers of wood, sheeting and pigment,
so that they weigh a ton and have to be mounted on the wall with hooks and angle irons to keep them from falling
down. Actually they are sculptures, albeit flat ones, and the idea that a rapt viewer might suddenly be struck dead
by a picture from above has a certain appeal to it. And Fischer's drawings sometimes look as if he had
intentionally exerted too much pressure on the paper to make sure that there's something to see on the back as
well.
What looks, at first sight, as if it were refreshingly spontaneous is in fact conceived and constructed with great
care and craftsmanship. After all, good craftsmanship has at least two sides to it and Urs Fischer exploits all of
them. You can turn everything he does around, look behind it, sometimes open it up, and it is just as beautiful at
the back as it is from the front. You can even set alight some of his works, which then consume themselves, and
in the process of which they make a razor-sharp statement on the (quantitative) productivity of contemporary
art. Fischer's professionalism is based on self-confidence and self-reflection, on his ability to use art to make a
statement about the present, on an astonishing technical repertoire and, above all, on a wealth of worthy ideas. »
Christoph Becker, Foreword
