Our Studio Sunday artist this week is Urs Fischer. Fischer works in a variety of media, including drawing, painting and sculpture. Given the variety in his practice, it’s no surprise that the artist’s studio, pictured here in Red Hook, New York, looks like such a busy, industrial workspace.

There’s really a lot going on in the studio space – shelves hold numerous pieces of equipment and huge quantities of supplies, while the overall feeling of the space is warehouse-like. The lights are bright and everything has a cool, grey concrete appearance. It seems like a place where a lot of work gets done.

Fischer has been known to work with fast-decaying materials such as bread and melting wax, a choice which has given some of his works a temporal dimension, adding a certain delicate and transient quality to the pieces. It’s interesting to think of the artist experimenting with these materials in the studio space – I wonder if one of those shelves contains blocks of wax, or if perhaps there are a few slices of stale bread lying around.

The view of the studio taken in this photo focuses on a space where the artist creates his two-dimensional works. At the far end of the space, a drying rack for canvases and paper works lies empty. Also visible on the nearest shelf are countless bottles of paint in every imaginable colour.

I like the art that’s made it directly onto the walls in the space, like the face on the pillar between the shelves. I wonder if it was a mock-up for something, or just a doodle by someone taking a break. Like big-name artists Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami, Fischer employs some assistants to help him complete the studio work. Fischer was born in Switzerland, and originally studied photography before moving to the United States in the early 2000’s. 

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