~URS FISCHER + CASSANDRA MACLEOD
FILE UNDER: LESS IS MORE + MORE IS MORE !!
URS FISCHER + CASSANDRA MACLEOD
OPENING RECEPTION: OCT 22, 2011
the show runs OCT 22 – NOV 12, 2011
GAVIN BROWN’S enterprise – 620 GREENWICH ST – NYC
URS FISCHER arriving with his daughter Lotti . . .
CASSANDRA MACLEOD, URS FISCHER and their young daughter, Lotti . . .
the family unit.
the essentialnuclear family unit. as in Facebook scaled right back down to the smallest unit.
Less is more.
to understand one family – is to get the beauty of the whole human ‘life’ chain . . .
the press release/artist statement – holds the key.
it reads like a (human) code book – a poem written by someone who wants to keep a little distance, a little dignity – while he is really baring it all. telling you . . . something very private and something really important and intimate and meaningful about his own life, his young family . . . and how it shapes – his creative force.
CASSANDRA MACLEOD . . .
the press release/artist statement opens like this:
“Beneath our feet is an inverted pyramid of excavated earth. It is the cup. The martini glass that will hold our DNA.”
if you saw the hole Urs dug here, you know exactly what he is saying . . . and if you can follow poetry, a roomful of many tables, some stacked one upon the other, a jumble of tables . . . i.e. MORE is MORE – becomes an homage to the poetry . . . that a young family, just starting out – shares.
it’s about infinity, depth, the unknown and the sole mother earth – that is our ground. that we learn to walk upon, and upon whom our lives play out – as we endlessly and infinitely – reproduce the human species. and try to evolve into a future . . . as we function in our survival mode. that is the path we walk. that is the floor of our homes, the gallery.
“Hovering over that mythic cup is a horizontal plane of our invention.”
Urs doesn’t mess around.
JULIAN SCHNABEL.
his face – shows up on one of the tables . . .
“Together with the chair, the table is a first sculpture.”
yeah, Urs has distilled basic human existence to – the functionality of the table . . .
RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA.
JOE BRADLEY.
collector PETER BRANT.
STEFANIE SEYMOUR.
art world power brokers, writer LINDA YABLONSKI and dealer JEANNE GREENBERG ROHATYN.
so you enter into this labyrinth of utilitarian hard-edged, as opposed to organic, round, over-sized or baroque – tables.
which is: less is more . . . sculpture-wise.
and you have to start to contemplate. space. multiplicity. the maze. the contrasts of shape, and scale . . . color. imagery.
MORE is truly MORE – at this point.
the spatial design of the whole, the creative many vs. the absolute utility of the one . . . it all comes back down to – just a table and a couple of chairs.
the hard edges of the tables and their conservative utility – are broken up into infinite possibility – by the multiplicity of acrylic silkscreened images – under a glossy coat of brushless surface lamination.
more IS more.
the metal legs – especially on the stacked tables – become a dynamic of their own.
would one want one ? or many stacked in an assortment, to be used as needed. or left as a sculpture. I don’t know.
I guess that would depend on if you were a less is more, or more is more – type person.
it was fun to come around a corner, and be stopped by the image.
“Together with the chair, the table is a first sculpture. Not a tool or a weapon, but an object autonomously itself while simultaneously integrated into our lived experience. Just like your dog, your table has evolved and entwined with us. It has run alongside, becoming indistinguishable and invisible.”
not.
“The table is part of the family, it is the stage on which we act.”
“The small personal universe over which we talk, eat, plan our future, pay our bills and raise our children.”
“We sit at the table and look past each other to see the pictures on the walls around us. We look down at plates of food below us on the table, look into each others eyes and we raise a glass.”
totally love the faux picnic table ‘planks’ . . . on this one.
“You get up from the table to close the window to the cold and wind.”
“Just then a sparrow flies swiftly in the room, circles around us at the table for a moment, and just as suddenly flies out through the window on the other side.”
a multiplicity of painted steel table mounts. more is more.
here and there – the equivalent of the “sparrow”.
“When we create this new flat space, the earth is lifted up to float 30 inches above the globe.”
the tables are tagged – with the artist’s signature underneath . . .
“We defy physical reality, make a mockery of gravity and discover ourselves and our imagination.”
“A psychic space that was midwife in the birth . . .”
“of our first terrors and the comforts we seek in each other.’
even a – Jackson Pollock table. (!!)
“This imaginary plane is the site of an original collective unconscious – spread out flat before us as we gathered around it.”
a drawing by the youngest artist in the family . . .
“We are sweet landfill, our own dusty molecules borrowed from the earth.”
painting by Cassandra, edge of table by Urs . . .
“but these objects here now are the feral forms of our unconscious. They are our aliens, unmoored from our endless cycle and lifting off into other dimensions.”
Cassandra’s painting . . .
“They are holograms, only resembling 3 dimensions, their imagery like pools of water at night . . .
reflecting back on ourselves.”
painting by Cassandra MacLeod . . .
“they are our beautiful excess and accumulation.”
“They sit in anticipation of our love . . .
and hunger . . . ”
. . . our nourishment and conversation.”
“Breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
ALL QUOTES – FROM THE GALLERY PRESS RELEASE/ARTIST STATEMENT
PHOTOS: NANCY SMITH