A banana, an egg and a carrot are just a few of the surreal masks devised by Urs Fischer in this special selection from his latest series, The Problem with Paintings, from the upcoming fourth issue of the biannual magazine Garage. Known for confronting our notions of identity and celebrity in works such as Problem Paintings, where images of Hollywood icons are obscured with foods and household objects, here the Zurich-born artist continues the theme by playfully casting real-life subjects to interact with their fruit and vegetable disguises. Garage is the brainchild of Russian collector and LACMA trustee Dasha Zhukova, whose ground-breaking Garage Center for Contemporary Culture opened in Moscow in 2008 to great acclaim. With a cover fashion story featuring works by Cindy Sherman shot by Patrick Demarchelier, the next edition of the cross-disciplinary title seeks to challenge the concept of modern identity—and the vanity that may accompany it. In this interview excerpt, Fischer sits down with curator Neville Wakefield to bridge the everyday with pop and fine art.
Neville Wakefield: Are you trying to erase the distinction between formal artwork and work that deals with pop culture? I’m thinking about your series of Problem Paintings. Are they mash-ups of pop culture and everyday objects?
Urs Fischer: For the Garage project we tried to see how it would be if you didn’t print it, if you juxtaposed these things in real life. So they’re all photos of things in real life—a kind of homemade version, where you lay actual eggs on a face and then photograph it.
NW: What’s the logic of the juxtaposition? Is it like the surrealists’ idea of the sewing machine and the umbrella, only here the chance encounter is between, say, a pickle and a Hollywood star?
UF: It’s different. There are usually two photos—not in this magazine, but in other ones I’ve made. It’s basically a collage, a juxtaposition. The funny thing is that fruits are more universal than movie stars.
NW: People want to recognize the Hollywood side of it, not the fruit side of it. But everyone knows a kiwi, not everyone knows Rita Hayworth.
UF: You have to put something that they want to see behind. Most of the people in these paintings are from old black-and-white movie stills that I’ve really worked on. The kids have no clue who these people are. Zero. They don’t even know Kirk Douglas.