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Even though last week our focus was on Milan, there are, in fact, other things happening in Italy. In Venice Urs Fischer’s new exhibition “Madame Fisscher” opened at Palazzo Grassi. This show, like his others, is all about objects. Here’s what he had to say about that:
“Everybody likes objects; everybody likes different objects. It comes down to what objects you want to put in your art. [Jeff] Koons and [Claes] Oldenburg both seem to have their agendas with their objects. So do I, I guess. I like them all: high, low, used, new, whichever works. I don’t know if the Lamp/Bear has anything more to do with Koons or Oldenburg than all three of us and everyone else have to do with [Marcel] Duchamp’s liberation of the real thing. Before him, it seems objects appeared in, or maybe as, still-lives. Duchamp’s the guy, the legend, who liberated objects from being second-class citizens. Even if his greatness lies in our imagination and how he built himself to make us imagine his work as we imagine it. His objects are often not very satisfying to spend time with outside of the fictions he created for them.”
[ madame fisscher: 15 april > 15 july ]
about perrin drumm
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Brooklyn-based art and architecture studio Snarkitecture has received a lot of press in recent years for their experimental exhibition design as well as for their installations for public art and retail spaces, but as a practice that’s interested in exploring spatial relationships on both a large and small scale, their design objects shouldn’t be overshadowed by their larger work.
For starters there’s “Slab Table,” which riffs on the form of an iceberg, a motif Snarkitecture used to great effect in 2010 in their storefront Richard Chai in New York. The play on topographical mapping is also a major part of “Excavated Mirror,” the mirror’s edge mimicking the squiggly line of a cartographer’s water edge.
My personal favorites are their prototypes, especially “Ghost Chair,” (above) a simple black chair with a ‘ghostly’ white resin sheet frozen in place around it, whipped across its front as if by a fierce wind. “Erosion Table” is a big, white slab that looks as if its been eaten away by acid, and “Break Light” is a long, bent fluorescent tube hanging precariously from a single cord.
All their pieces are for sale. Email info@snarkitecture.com for inquiries.
about perrin drumm
