Urs Fischer
Urs Fischer – Life, Work, and Artistic Legacy
Discover the life and art of Urs Fischer (b. 1973), the Swiss-born sculptor, installation and conceptual artist whose unpredictable works explore presence, absence, materiality, and transformation.
Introduction
Urs Fischer (born 1973 in Zürich, Switzerland) is a leading contemporary artist whose practice traverses sculpture, installation, photography, drawing, and digital media.
Fischer is sometimes described as a “perfectionist in imperfection” — he deliberately embraces decay, entropy, melting, and shifting states as part of the work.
Early Life & Education
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Urs Fischer was born in Zürich in 1973, into a family of doctors.
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He attended the Schule für Gestaltung (School of Design) in Zürich, where he initially studied the foundational year of art and design, then entered the photography department.
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During his studies, to support himself, he worked as a bouncer at Zurich nightclubs and house parties.
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He left formal schooling early: after two years he declined to continue with tests and moved to Amsterdam in 1993 (age ~19), drawn by the more dynamic contemporary art scene.
Career & Artistic Evolution
Geographic Moves & Studio Life
Fischer’s trajectory includes stints in Amsterdam, London, Los Angeles, Berlin, and ultimately New York. In Berlin and New York he shared studios with Rudolf Stingel. His New York studio (in Red Hook, Brooklyn) became a large warehouse setup for oversized projects and installations. In 2019, he also maintained a studio presence in Los Angeles (in Frogtown) while still connected to his Swiss roots.
Signature Works & Approaches
Fischer’s practice is multi-modal. He freely moves among media, often blending them or shifting materials mid-installation.
Some iconic works / strategies include:
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Melting wax sculptures / candle works: Fischer has created large wax figures (e.g. representations of famous art-world personalities or classical sculptures) that slowly melt over the course of the exhibition.
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Bread House (Untitled, 2004–2005): a Swiss chalet built entirely of loaves of bread, which gradually decayed, eaten by birds, then collapsed.
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Untitled (Lamp / Bear): a large bronze bear pierced by a lamp—strange juxtaposition of the cute and functional.
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You (2007): He excavated a large hole in the floor of a gallery, creating a sculptural void you could enter—a work about absence, space, disruption.
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CHAOS #1–#500 / Digital & NFT works: In recent years Fischer embraced digitally mediated sculpture and NFTs. He scanned everyday objects, re-imagined them digitally, and exhibited them as digital installations.
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Problem Paintings / iPad paintings: He uses technology (e.g. iPad) to paint, exploring immediacy and gesture within digital media.
Fischer often frames his work as a “collision of things” — pairing disparate objects or materials to see how they translate, conflict, or merge.
His art frequently toys with impermanence, decay, ephemerality, presence/absence, and metaphor through matter.
Exhibitions & Milestones
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Fischer’s first solo show was in 1996 at Galerie Walcheturm, Zurich.
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In 2004, he had a major museum show Kir Royal at Kunsthaus Zürich as a large-scale institutional presentation.
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In 2009–2010, he staged Marguerite de Ponty at the New Museum in New York, which included immersive installations and active interventions in gallery space.
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In 2013, MOCA (Los Angeles) mounted a sweeping retrospective across multiple floors.
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He has held recent solo exhibitions titled Denominator, Ice Cream Truck Democracy, Lovers (Museo Jumex, Mexico City), Beauty (Gagosian Paris), Easy Solutions & Problems (Gstaad) — showing his sustained visibility.
Style, Philosophy & Themes
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Fischer’s approach is often playful, irreverent, subversive, yet deeply meditative about material and time.
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He challenges how we perceive ordinary things by placing them in surprising contexts, inflating or shrinking scale, or letting them degrade.
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Many works embrace entropy and decay as integral to the meaning, not merely metaphorical decoration.
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He is less about polished perfection than “perfect imperfection” — his works may look messy, in flux, incomplete, or in transition by design.
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His art often asks us to confront absence, emptiness, the empty space between objects as much as what is materially present.
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He plays with metaphor through material — bread, wax, steel, digital scans — to collapse boundaries between “high art” materials and everyday matter.
Personal Life & Public Persona
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Fischer has lived in New York since about 2004, and also maintains presence in Los Angeles and studios in Europe.
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He was married to Tara Subkoff; they divorced around 2016.
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He has a daughter from a prior relationship with Cassandra MacLeod.
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His homes and studios themselves often become part of his aesthetic — the Los Angeles home and garden, for example, has been transformed into a sculptural environment.
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Though trained in photography, Fischer is critical of formal art education, frequently stating that art cannot really be “taught” in conventional academic ways.
Legacy & Influence
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Fischer is widely recognized as one of the most important voices in contemporary art of his generation.
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His embrace of ephemeral, mutable works contributed to a shift in how contemporary sculpture and installation are understood — not as static, permanent objects, but as dynamic, processual events.
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By merging lowly materials (bread, wax) and digital techniques with grand scale, he has influenced younger artists who explore hybridity of media.
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His international exhibitions, retrospectives, and collector acclaim (some works fetch millions) have given him a global footprint.
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Fischer’s works provoke conversations about mortality, materiality, time, and disruption — opening spaces for viewers to meditate on their own perceptions of stability and decay.
Selected Quotes & Reflections
While Fischer is not known for pithy maxims, here are some remarks and ideas that reflect his mindset:
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He once said his goal is “not to make art anymore” someday — that art feels like an “exoskeleton” he hopes to outgrow.
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He views making art as an act of belief rather than technique — that conviction, instinct, and trust often matter more than training.
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In discussing his melting candle works, he seems to invite us to witness dissolution and change as part of presence — to see beauty in decay.
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His “collision of things” framing suggests that meaning often arises not from isolated objects, but from their encounter, friction, tension, and interplay.
Lessons from Urs Fischer’s Journey
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Embrace impermanence as content
Fischer teaches that vanishing, melting, decay can be as meaningful as permanence—our lives, like his artworks, are in flux. -
Material is metaphor
Even the humblest material (bread, wax) can carry poetic, symbolic, and philosophical weight when placed in the right context. -
Don’t fear messiness
His “perfect imperfection” aesthetic suggests that seeking flawless form can sometimes sterilize the vitality of work. -
Trust your intuition over schooling
Fischer’s departure from formal art training and his critique of traditional pedagogy point to the value of pathfinding, curiosity, and self-belief. -
Let art remain vibrant, not static
By designing pieces that change, degrade, or respond over time, he reminds us that art, like life, shouldn’t be frozen.
Conclusion
Urs Fischer’s art is a continuous experiment with presence, transformation, and rupture. He refuses simple category: his works are part-sculpture, part-performance, part paradox. In them, everyday materials become poetic catalysts, and the boundary between solidity and dissolution is constantly renegotiated.
Through his career—shifting cities, methods, mediums—Fischer demonstrates that art can be generous, risky, playful, and deeply meditative all at once. His legacy will likely be seen not just in his iconic installations, but in how he expanded the language of what a sculpture or artwork can be.