Urs Fischer is planning a show at the New Museum. It involves some serious construction harnessing the labor of dozens of others, the Wall Street Journal says, but the museum doesn’t want to discuss the cost:
Mr. Fischer, a 36-year-old sculptor who some in the art world are calling the next Jeff Koons, will become the first artist to take over the New Museum at its new location. “Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty,” opens on Oct. 28. The exhibit includes giant grey moon-rock looking sculptures that viewers can walk around, and cheeky sculptures like a human-sized tongue that protrudes from the wall when a viewer approaches. One floor of the museum is designed to feel like a three-dimensional cubist sculpture. The New Museum declined to discuss the cost of putting together the show.
The Zurich-born artist is based in New York and is known for particularly demanding work. For a 2007 show at Gavin Brown’s gallery in New York, he took a jackhammer to the gallery’s concrete floor to create an 8-foot-deep crater that measured 38-by-30 feet. The gallery says it cost about $250,000 to destroy and then repair the space. He has had solo shows at European museums including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and his work was included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. One of his most famous pieces is 2005’s “Bread House,” a life-size cabin structure made of bread loaves and wood.
So far, Mr. Fischer and the New Museum have hired as many as 120 outside employees to help with architectural drawings, construction, plumbing and expediting city building code approvals. A typical show at the New Museum requires no outside contractors, Mr. Gioni says.
Moving Ceilings for Sculptures (Wall Street Journal)
