Wallpaper and the Artist’s Hand, Urs Fischer at the New Museum

Urs Fischer at the New Museum, Tucker Nichols at Gallery 16

Sol LeWitt archived digitally and physically at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Two current shows prominently feature wallpaper, specifically, wallpaper applied to the walls of the exhibition space. On the walls of the third floor of the retrospective of the work of Urs Fischer at the New Museum is an exact photographed inch by inch copy of what was already there including plug outlets and security guards. This comment on the role of white walls as the given background of the modern fine arts and of the meaning of replication as creation is surreal, unexpected, and refreshes the mind making possible more, freer thoughts as the experience of the true unexpected can.

The other use of wallpaper is by Tucker Nichols at Gallery 16 where he uses his wallpaper to comment on the interplay between execution and intention, craft and concept. His wallpaper refers to the blown up line drawings of Sol LeWitt, examples of which long dominated the vestibule of the SFMOMA. The SFMOMA pieces, bright and geometric like the work here, were, unlike the work here, carefully meticulously produced by assistants from small, precise color pencil studies to gigantic panels. The pieces include careful instructions for creation, installation, and deinstallation. Nothing is left to chance, to the interaction between concept and completed object. By intention the process is completely controlled, leaving no place for spontaneity, or for surprise, not even of process generated surprise.

In contrast, Nichol’s wallpaper celebrates the vagaries and chances of the planned, but spontaneous stroke. The wallpaper is delightfully drippy and messy, but its design was clearly planned before work began. Like all the work here the wallpaper comments on the dialectic between execution and intention. To emphasize the presence of an initial concept, of the initial concept, he often replicates or pays homage to the work of others in simplified renditions using modest, if not homely, materials. The images may sometimes be lumpen and intentionally not carefully formed: Their process of formation is often apparent. But they have presence and are likable. Like the work of early Giacometti and of Brancusi for whom the artist has created an homage of “The Kiss” made from a picnic table and two boxy shapes, these images charm. They lack the militant grey intentional strident ugliness of a Beuys or a Bacon. There is no loathing or self loathing here. As with the work of Richard Tuttle, the intellect at play is what is on display on the walls and in the constructions..