Manic Mechanic

Urs Fischer and Darren Bader

Join artist and exhibition curator Urs Fischer for an in-depth conversation with artist Darren Bader on John Chamberlain’s six-decade long nomadic and experimental career. The duo will discuss the nuanced role of the “artist as curator,” elaborating on Fischer’s process for this show. The broader artistic cosmos presented in the exhibition’s accompanying catalog, John Chamberlain Against the World, will also serve as a road map for this freewheeling conversation, which will invoke other artists ranging from Gian Lorenzo Bernini to Hans Bellmer to Kennedy Yanko to Arman.

Artists Bios

Urs Fischer

Urs Fischer mines the potential of materials—from clay, steel, and paint to bread, dirt, and produce—creating works that disorient and bewilder. Through scale distortions, illusion, and the juxtaposition of common objects, his sculptures, paintings, photographs, and large-scale installations explore themes of perception and representation while maintaining a witty irreverence and mordant sense of humor.

Urs Fischer was born in 1973 in Zurich and studied photography at the Schule für Gestaltung, Zurich. He has exhibited extensively internationally, and his work is included in many important public and private collections worldwide. Recent solo exhibitions include Flea Circus, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2023); Denominator, Gagosian, New York (2022); Urs Fischer, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (2022); The Lyrical and the Prosaic, Aïshti Foundation, Beirut (2019); Leo, Gagosian, Paris (2019); and ERROR, The Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2019). Fischer lives and works in New York.

Darren Bader

Darren Bader is a contemporary art brand working in headspace, prose, found object, comedy, verse, AR, and video.