Urs Fischer
Urs Fischer: The Lyrical and the Prosaic
Installed at Beirut’s Aïshti Foundation in fall 2019, Urs Fischer’s solo exhibition The Lyrical and the Prosaic—his first in the Middle East—remained closed to the public for many months, its opening postponed at first due to the eruption of anti-government demonstrations across Lebanon and then due to the covid-19 crisis. It opened at last in late June 2020.
This publication, released in conjuction with the Urs Fischer's exhibition (Beirut, Lebanon) documents both a series of recent and previously acquired works of the artist's at the Aïshti Collection, creating a series of new installations, paintings, and interventions. Evident everywhere in the exhibition is Fischer’s fascination with subversions of scale and with shifts from the monumental to the minuscule, and, as the show’s title suggests, from the sublime to the prosaic.
This book carefully documents the exhibition and the works on view, but also includes photos that Fischer and his collaborators took during the protests around Beirut, where they remained for nearly a month, first to prepare the exhibition and then stranded due to the demonstrations. This dialogue between the museum and the street, between the inside and the outside, seems to echo throughout Fischer’s art, as he systematically attempts to find new ways to disarticulate and complicate the relationships that tie reality and fiction, or, more broadly, the prosaic and the lyrical, to use the terms chosen by Fischer to title this exhibition. Massimiliano Gioni
Published on the occassion of the exhibition, Urs Fischer: The Lyrical and the Prosaic (20 October - 1 January 2019) at the Aïshti Foundation, Lebanon, with introduction text by curator Massimiliano Gioni.
Priya Bhatnagar and Abby Haywood (eds.), 2021
Softcover 220 pages
Publisher: Aïshti Foundation and Kiito-San
ISBN: 9780996413084
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