Urs Fischer

As I was reading a review in the Village Voice of the Urs Fischer show now on display at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, I found it to be saturated with post-modern criticism. One of the first critical questions she poses about the exhibit is "isn't this a replay of something we've seen a hundred times before?" A characteristic of the post-modern discourse is that nothing is new and everything has been done before. The article continues with this theme comparing everything in the exhibition to something from the past. She dedicates the last section of her article to dissecting each section of the show and highlighting all the artists who influenced Fischer, from Koons to Kippenberger. Most art develops in discourse within a movement, a time period, or in reference to another form of art, so that many art contemporaries produce similar work, such as Andy Goldsworthy and Robert Smithson in the land art movement. However, the criticism within the post-modernist era is that there is not cohesive movement between contemporaries, rather it is characterized by a random speckling of artists in discourse with past movements making contemporary art shows seem dated.

One of the comments in the article I found most interesting was how the New Museum was "Inaugurated as an upstart venture with aims to realign the art world's chi..., 30 years later, it is following the standard template: anointing white, male, European artists in an attempt to build a reciprocal beneficial art history." So, maybe it is not our generations fault we are not seeing any new art, but the benefactors of art are obsessed with art of their generation unwilling to admit anything is new is worthy of display. Although this may be the case, I think there is new innovative art being displayed. I particularly enjoyed the Cai Guo-Qiang show at the Guggenheim. The artist uses the tradition Chinese gunpowder to make his drawings, which he explodes on the paper leaving distinct marks. I also think that in the field of Architecture, Frank Gehry is doing innovative work by developing his buildings to mold into the surrounding landscapes. At the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain, Richard Serra also designed a monumental sculpture for the permanent collection to highlight the architecture of the Frank Gehry, which develops an interesting discourse. The sculpture itself also presents a new idea of sculpture to be a compounding communal experience over a matter of time, hence the title of the work.

Although I generally take a negative view on post modernism, I do think there is new concepts to explore in art we just have to look for them.