Urs Fischer: Francesco
9 May 2026 - 9 May 2028
Atrium Gallery | Free
Urs Fischer’s practice is materially diverse – crossing installation and sculpture, photography, painting, and book publishing – and, while often humorous and cheeky, centres around a series of questions or issues that go the heart of art’s historical functions and aspirations.
Francesco is a wax portrait of the Italian art critic and curator Francesco Bonami, staring at his phone on top of a refrigerator holding a cornucopia of fruit and vegetables. While Francesco – standing as it does on a plinth – takes the appearance of a sculpture in an art museum, the work intentionally rubs up against many of the expectations we hold of sculpture in this context: the figure of Francesco, the refrigerator and the cornucopia it holds are all made of wax, and subject to a continuous process of destruction and rebirth, each time the work melts and is recast.
This work of art is on long term loan from the National Gallery of Australia with support from the Australian Government as part of Sharing the National Collection. #artacrossaustralia
Urs Fischer
Urs Fischer studied photography at the Schule für Gestaltung in Zurich and during the early 1990s worked as a set designer for theatre and film. He began exhibiting in the mid-1990s and has since established himself as a leading contemporary artist with studios in Brooklyn, New York, and Berlin. His work embodies many of the attributes of 1990s’ contemporary art – in style, process and effect often reflecting Fischer’s own immersion in the ephemeral rave culture that for many characterised the experience of that decade.
Fischer’s diverse practice spans across many artforms, utilising humour to question and provoke discussion around the history of art. The most fundamental of these are the claims made of art that it carries or makes transparent certain essential truths and, at the same time, that art has the capacity to reveal or help make sense of its specific time. Reflecting both of these ambitions, Fischer’s work makes a virtue of complexity and confusion, in turn drawing attention to the basic fact that complexity and confusion (and, indeed, death) are, despite history’s efforts to create order, fundamental to the experience of life.
Fischer has been the subject of monographic presentations at many public museums, including the New Museum in New York City (2009) and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2013). His work has also been included in many major curated exhibitions, including the Venice Biennales of 2003, 2007 and 2011.
Image:
Urs Fischer
Switzerland 1973
Francesco (detail) 2017
wax, pigment, wicks, aluminium powder, stainless steel, steel and bronze hardware, electrical components, light and batteries
391.4 x 80.3 x 103.6 cm (overall)
National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra
Purchased with the assistance of the National Gallery of Australia Gala Fund 2019
© Urs Fischer. Courtesy of the artist and Sadie Coles HQ, London