The “CHAOS” of Collision with Urs Fischer

“People seem to fear art. Art has always been a word for this thing that can’t be rationalized; when you see or hear something that you struggle to explain. But that’s its strength, of course, that’s what the word ‘art’ is for,”
– Urs Fischer

Urs Fischer, born in Switzerland and based in New York City, is widely regarded as one of the leading forces of the contemporary art movement today. His work, which includes sculpture, photography and large scale installations, acts as a “collision” of things”, carefully orchestrating a delicate, often humor-infused, dance between everyday objects and their relationships to human existence throughout history. Through these interactions, Fischer reminds us of the contradiction, complexity and impermanence of simply being. A Duchampion take on representationalism, Fischer’s artwork explores material and their impact. It is disruptive at its core, combining forces, compounding flow and creating dialogue amongst both his subject matter and audience.

Fischer has been creating in various forms since he was a teenager. He recalls the moment he fell in love with art in a London museum, where he made the realization that artwork was one of the only things in the world which allows each individual that interacts with it to take something away while remaining completely unaltered. He’s been experimenting with different mediums and art forms his entire life, with emerging technology playing a central role in his ever evolving creation process.

Fischer has been exhibited extensively across the globe, with leading galleries, including Gagosian; Sadie Coles HQ, London; Massimo de Carlo, Milan; The Modern Institute, Glasgow; Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin and
Jeffrey Deitch, New York and Los Angeles. Solo exhibitions at major museums include Palazzo Grassi, Venice; Kunsthalle Vienna; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Garage Museum, Moscow;
Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, Arles; Legion of Honor, San Francisco; Aïshti Foundation, Beirut. Fischer has public installation and works in major private collections around the world. Fischer’s playful Untitled (Lamp/Bear) sculpture has become a landmark outright at Hamad International Airport, Doha.

His artworks have been sold at auction for millions at renowned auction houses such as Christie’s.

Check out our community AMA with Urs Fischer to learn more about his work and the CHAOS series + Read on to learn more about Fischer’s impact on the world of art!

NEW CHAOS DROP ARTWORKS, LIVE 12/13 @ 3:30 PM PT

CHAOS #97 Strangers

Editions: One
Pricing: Accepting offers only

CHAOS #98 Now

Editions: One
Pricing: Accepting offers only

CHAOS #99 Bernays

Editions: One
Pricing: Accepting offers only

CHAOS #100 Hype

Editions: One
Pricing: Accepting offers only

CHAOS #101 Design

Editions: One
Pricing: Accepting offers only

For Urs Fischer, the seemingly mundane and often ephemeral objects that appear throughout his extensive body of work represent the data of human existence. More so than human feelings or emotions, he believes these tangible shadows of life form our understanding of the world around us.
-Loic Gouzer, Founder of Fair Warning

In Fischers’ own words, “anything can be used to create art—your mind, your hand, your elbow or toe.”Through his artwork, Fischer presents the hidden significance of seemingly mundane, everyday objects. For example, Things, a sculpture Fischer debuted at the Gagosian in midtown Manhattan, explores the impact and influence of “things”, inanimate objects and their intuitive role in shaping the human experience. Various objects; a table, chair, car door, and wheel; come together to define a living being, the rhino, highlighting the fluttering flow of inspiration and influence inanimate objects have on our sense of existence.

As is the case with much of Fischer’s work, an accumulation of various objects give way to a harmonious balance and internalized meditation on the universal experience. Seemingly random, each object plays a role in telling a historic narrative that has transpired across centuries, cultures and species.

The environment itself acts as an important narrator in Fischer’s visual stories, not only influencing but often acting as a determining factor in his work. This notion is evident through his big clay series, a body of massive sculptural installations which have toured the world, and called settings like the Piazza Signoria in Florence and Seagram’s building plaza temporary homes. The permanent capture of a fleeting moment is juxtaposed by the ever-changing environment, with factors like light and shadow influencing the way viewers interact with the piece.

“The original clay model for the Big Clay sculpture comes from holding a portion of clay that fits in a palm. It is formed with both hands in a sensual and repetitive gesture, like a bodily motion. I stop before a conscious composition comes into play, in order to just represent a moment, before it represents something specific. I make hundreds of small models, and then start the selection process of elimination, not unlike a talent show. I continue until only one is left. This model gets enlarged through a series of technological means before it is cast in metal. The final sculpture stands for a moment. A moment which we wish we could preserve. Like a sunset over the Pacific, the taste of a fruit, a smell, or a human touch.

One might ask why a sculpture, based on a simple gesture, has to be this big. My understanding is that, at first glance, landscape is very elementary, like a drawing made by a child. Sky, mountain, ocean, sun. Big things. Big Clay is nothing else than elementary. The longer we contemplate landscape, the more details we see. Vegetation, animals, insects, rocks, and structures. All of them build a big picture. Everything is the same–an oak tree is an oak tree, but each has its own expression. That is what makes life precious. My sculpture attempts to speak about that. The individual in the infinity variety that is life.” -Urs Fischer on the Big Clay series

CHAOS: A Dive Into NFTs

A practice centered around an open minded and exploratory approach to material and vessels of communication, Fischer has continuously incorporated and experimented with new forms of technological expression within his art. The digital medium is not new to Fischer, who has juxtaposed his early body of handmade, analogue works against digitally inclined explorations in the recent years. Much of his past work involves a dynamic interplay between the handmade physical and the digital, with handmade objects being digitally translated/remastered and then translated again into the physical world. Still the message remains the same: learning who we are from the objects around us.

In CHAOS, Fischer introduces his first series of completely digital sculptures centered upon “mesmerizing collisions” which bring into question not only our relationships to various materials and “things”, but also how these objects relate to each other and the role they’ve played in the evolution of humanity.

The series consists of 1000 objects, paired together to form 500 creations, or visual conversations. Random pairings to the blind eye, these works are actually meticulous representations of cultural artifacts, historical symbolism, anecdotes and phenomenons – each with a unique story to tell. An exploration of human nature, and our need for a variety of tools, the artworks are centered around manmade objects and the roles they’ve played throughout human history. Purely natural elements are intentionally left out of this series, to highlight the innate human need for control over nature and our environments- As variety in human tools and forms of control increase, the diversity and variety within nature concurrently decreases.

Fischer has teamed up with the team at Fair Warning, a highly curated auction platform founded by Loïc Gouzer (formerly co-chairman and head of contemporary art at Christie’s), Pace Gallery and MakersPlace to tell these stories within the emerging digital art movement that is being immortalized on the blockchain in the form of NFTs. The backing of this series by Gouzer, an authority, tastemaker and pioneer within the contemporary art world, and Fair Warning speaks volumes in itself.

NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 10: Co-Chairman, Post-War and Contemporary Art New York Loic Gouzer (C) speaks as Christie’s unveils Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ with Andy Warhol’s ‘Sixty Last Suppers’ at Christie’s New York on October 10, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for Christie’s Auction House)

Gouzer became a legend across art spaces after facilitating the record shattering, unprecedented sales Leonardo da Vinci’s $450.3 million Salvator Mundi and David Hockney’s $90.3 million Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures). While at Christie’s, Gouzer was known for his inventive and inspired auctions, and of course the colossal success that followed. An innovator at heart, Gouzer has recently ventured into uncharted waters, launching a hyper-curated auction platform of his own. Today Gouzer continues his pioneering legacy by bringing Fair Warning into the NFT art movement, with Urs Fischer paving the way.

“I have believed for some time that the NFT sphere will be a catalyst that will give a voice to a new generation of artists and expand the palette of expressions for established artists that are not afraid to embrace paradigm shifts. Urs is a phenomenal artist who has never been afraid of taking conceptual and technological risks to advance his wildest ideas and give form to his vision.
It’s an honor that he chose Fair Warning to accompany him on this journey to a new and unknown world. I truly believe that decentralization concurrent with hypercuration, such as the one provided by Fair Warning, will play a key role in the assertion of this new medium. This one-of-a-kind collaboration between Fair Warning, MakersPlace and Pace Gallery, that coalesced to serve Urs’ vision, may well become a
blueprint for future artists of his caliber.”
– Loïc Gouzer, Founder and CEO of Fair Warning.

More Than A Digital Sculpture Series

As Fischers’ first purely digital series, CHAOS takes digital translation and interaction to the next level. Rather than limiting the experience to a purely visual one, Fischer grants owners access to not only the artwork file but also all source files, actually allowing them shape and define the movement within the piece, and thereby the interaction with the artworks. While all artworks are perpetually in motion, with the source files at hand, the owners can now chose in what directions the artworks move. Through this unique format, Fischer aims to partially fuse the worlds of physical, digital; experience and interaction. It allows for infinite opportunities for interpretation within the same piece.

“The pairings happened intuitively with objects from all parts of life. Whether the pairings are amusing or straightforward, 1000 objects can tell so many stories, and each one is as legitimate as the next.”
–Urs Fischer

This release signals the first fine artist of Fischers’ caliber venturing into this new and rapidly growing space. Despite the CHAOS series representing Fisher’s foray into the world of NFTs and rare digital art, the series echoes themes and relationships found in past physical artworks of Fischer such as Untitled (Lamp/Bear), You Can Not Win and Bad Timing, Lamb Chop!.

*Untitled (Lamp/Bear)* by Urs Fischer, sold at auction at Christie’s for 6,802,500

*Bad Timing, Lamb Chop!*. by Urs Fischer

These artworks highlight the interplay between objects and their deeper meanings to human beings – some obvious, some humorous and some painstakingly contemplative. In CHAOS, Urs Fischer deep dives into these themes, exploring the various stories these objects have to tell, reshaping our perception of our world and role within it in the process. Like the artworks in CHAOS, these artworks highlight the depth of human desire, stories and needs.

In Human, the first artwork from the series, an egg and lighter come together to symbolically reveal the birth of humankind – The egg, according to Fischer, is a symbol of who we are. It symbolizes our beginnings. It also symbolizes our relationship with agriculture and the domestication of animals- two factors that have shaped human life as we know it. The lighter represents fire – one of man’s kinds first discovered and arguably most important in tools. With the lighter, humans desire to control nature and our elemental settings is expressed. Together, these objects have sowed the seeds for the contemporary human experience. It is an origin story.

CHAOS #1 Human sold for auction at Fair Warning for $97.5K

Human, the first of the 500 original artworks from the CHAOS series, will be available for purchase via auction directly on Fair Warning on Sunday April 11th at 5 PM ET. This will be followed by the release of five artworks from the series auctioned on MakersPlace, which will also be available for purchase through Pace Gallery, who will be curating a number of artworks on MakersPlace throughout the Drop. The second CHAOS artwork will drop on MakersPlace on April 12th at 3:30 PM PT.

It is with great honor and pleasure that we welcome Urs Fischer into the world of NFTs and share his groundbreaking new series CHAOS with the world.

Follow Urs Fischer’s MakersPlace store to be notified when the artworks Drop.

SOLD CHAOS ARTWORKS

CHAOS #60 Transfer

Editions: One
Pricing: Community Raffle, gifted to NFTDiscover

CHAOS #55 Hexenring

Editions: One
Pricing: SOLD for 15 ETH ($51,342.15)

CHAOS #56 Paradise

Editions: One
Pricing: SOLD for $41,500

CHAOS #57 Psychoacoustics

Editions: One
Pricing: SOLD for $34,140.69

CHAOS #58 Pellucid

Editions: One
Pricing: SOLD for 20 ETH (~$68,527)

CHAOS #59 Mind

Editions: One
Pricing: Sold for $45,100

CHAOS #38 Domination

Editions: One
Pricing: SOLD for 21.296 ETH (~$68,761.16)

CHAOS #39 Imposter

Editions: One
Pricing: SOLD for 21.2ETH ($68,451.19)

CHAOS #40 Trobairitz

Editions: One
Pricing: SOLD for 17ETH (~$54,890.11)

CHAOS #41 Divination

Editions: One
Pricing: SOLD for $63,043.60