Urs Fischer

Urs Fischer was born in 1973 in Zurich, Switzerland, and studied photography at the Schule für Gestaltung in Zurich before establishing himself as one of the most formally restless figures in contemporary art. Now based in New York and Los Angeles, Fischer works across sculpture, installation, painting, and photography, consistently destabilizing the boundaries between the monumental and the ephemeral, the recognizable and the uncanny. His practice has been shaped by an appetite for material contradiction — works that appear solid yet dissolve, that borrow from popular culture yet resist easy legibility, that occupy institutional space while quietly undermining its conventions.

Fischer's exhibition history spans more than two decades of sustained international engagement. Early solo presentations at Kunsthaus Zürich and Espace 315 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, both in 2004, announced a practice already operating at institutional scale. Subsequent solo projects at the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi in Milan, the Blaffer Gallery in Houston, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, and Kaldor Art Projects in Sydney extended his reach across Europe, North America, and the Pacific. His 2009 exhibition Marguerite de Ponty at the New Museum in New York marked a decisive moment in his American institutional profile, presenting immersive environments of characteristically unpredictable materiality. The following year, Oscar the Grouch at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center in Greenwich, Connecticut, demonstrated his sustained interest in transforming culturally familiar imagery into sculpture that operates at an unsettling remove from its source. A major solo survey at MOCA Grand Avenue in Los Angeles in 2013 and Madame Fisscher at Palazzo Grassi in Venice in 2012 further consolidated his standing. Fischer has also participated in the Venice Biennale in 2003, 2007, and 2011, and appeared in significant group contexts including the Gwangju Biennale and exhibitions at the New Museum, the Henry Moore Institute, and the Musée Rodin.

Fischer is represented by Gagosian, Sadie Coles HQ, The Modern Institute, and Vito Schnabel Gallery, and his work is held in prominent private collections including those of Dakis Joannou and François Pinault, the latter presented at Palazzo Grassi in 2007. The Pinault Collection's Bourse de Commerce in Paris holds his 2011 work Untitled. His activity has remained vigorous into the mid-2020s, with solo exhibitions at Gagosian London and Gagosian Rome in 2025, and forthcoming presentations including Eugène Atget at Gagosian Athens and LA Dust at Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles, both opening in 2026.