Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/130754
PHOTO BY STEFAN ALTENBURGER, © URS FISCHER, COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, LOS ANGELES FULL CIRCLE Untitled (Bread House) 2004–05; Problem Painting, 2012, hangs on the wall. JESSICA MORGAN, curator at the Tate Modern, London, has been trying to persuade Fischer to let her mount an exhibition of his work since 2002. After offering him the prestigious Tate Turbine Hall commission (he turned her down), she has finally got her man. When Fischer invited her to curate his MOCA retrospective, she happily accepted. She recalls spotting one of the exhibition's key works—Portrait of a Single Raindrop, 2003/13, which consists of two vast holes sawn through the gallery walls—for sale at Frieze Art Fair, London, in 2005. She and then-MOCA curator Paul Schimmel were on an acquisition committee for the Tate. "I said to Paul, 'We must get this,' but we weren't able to persuade the other committee members. Then Paul bought it for MOCA!" Morgan is delighted to be able to install it now for the first time in Los Angeles. "It's often very easy to read Urs' work as a simple, gestural statement. But behind everything there's always a much more complex relationship. Really, these big statement pieces are about how to create a space to show work in. I think that's something he struggles with a lot—the artiness of the museum environment." Untitled (Nude on a Table), 2011 CULTURED 97