TOKYO.- Urs Fischer employs humor and the improbable to encourage serious philosophical discussions about painting and sculpture, wrapped in disarming clothing. The artist’s first exhibition at Fergus McCaffrey Tokyo is titled after the game Spot the Difference and in it timeless existential themes are cast in wax to be melted, while playful ideas are poured in bronze and made permanent.

A provocative and jovial spirit has animated Fischer’s work for three decades in investigating the dualities of high culture and kitsch, the timeless and the temporary, the mind and body, and truth and deception. His practice has confounded expectations, transcended existing classifications of contemporary art, and has attracted a large and devoted following amongst both expert and novice viewers.

The architecture of Fergus McCaffrey’s Tokyo gallery is central to the conception of Spot the Difference; with the finished architecture of the main gallery sitting directly above an unfinished sub-basement, which prompted the artist to delve into the psychology of the conscious and sub-conscious mind.

Upstairs:

A pair of identical over-life-size self-portrait sculptures of the artist stand separately in two identical rooms, with an improvised irregularly cut hole in a wall allowing both figures to gaze at each other. Collectively called Mirror, the self-portraits are examples of the artist’s celebrated Candle portraits and they will be set alight on the first day of the exhibition melting, sagging, and collapsing independently; with losses and drips amassing slowly on the floor over the three-month duration of the exhibition. At the close of the show the remains of the Candles will be cleaned away and then entirely recast anew as part of a recurring cycle of death and rebirth.

Mirror suggests a one-dimensional self-reflection, but Fischer’s morphing self-portraits and the haphazardly cut wall offer a multiplicity of potential interpretations. Is the improvised hole a furtive cut-out avenue for private dialogue or a means of escape? The wall pieces sit behind each figure, and could these be slotted back into place, to preserve discretion or evade detection? How did this hole open-up? What is the nature of the dialogue taking place? Ǫuestions abound.

Downstairs:

Reprising the motif of the hole and the repair from upstairs, Fischer has installed an immersive Rorschach wallpaper that blends real and reproduction concrete holes and repair-marks that envelops the floor and walls of the entire sub- basement. The space has been transformed into a confusing, doubled, self-reflective hall of mirrors that challenges the viewer to ‘spot the difference’ amidst a group of painted bronze sculptures and playful drawings occupy the walls, floor, and ceiling.

The sculptures vary in scale from the miniscule to the mid-sized, and carry enigmatic titles such as Attitude, A Man & A Rose, Carnivores, and Drama; physical conundrums that are perhaps an insight into the subconscious of the artist and how Fischer’s inventive mind sorts through the chaos of creation.

The practice of self-portraiture is at the heart of Spot the Difference, and Fischer has repeatedly returned to his own face and body to invoke and probe the archetypal language and history of figures as diverse as Albrecht Dürer, Vincent van Gogh, and Alighiero e Boetti, who offered themselves as gateways into the mind of the artist. In working at the nexus of Conceptual Art, Pop, Minimalism, and Arte Povera, Fischer pushes further into the mechanisms of the manufacture of celebrity – icon-making, gravitas, and fraud – with equal measures of humor and profundity.

By doubling himself in Mirror, he has established a profound stand-off between two or more undisclosed parts of himself, that encourages our further curiosity and exploration.

Sigmund Freud famously outlined his conception of the self as being the endless conflict between the id, ego, and superego in Beyond the Pleasure Principle in 1920, with the ego mediating and seeking conformity between the id’s primitive desires and the socially approved expectations of the superego. However, Fischer offers us the opportunity to reach even deeper than Freud, given the self-immolation and reincarnation of his self-portraits.

Exhibited in Japan for the first time, Fischer’s Candle portraits are particularly apt for consideration through the perspective of Zen Buddhist practice of overcoming the conflict of the id / ego / superego model through meditation, to remove the illusion of selfhood separated from the surrounding environment. Zen also uses humor and the absurd in koans to shake the disciple free of all conceptions and structures that stand in the way of the achievement of self-realization, and to understand that the essence of existence is not philosophical or theoretical, but the attainment of a mode of being.

Analyzing and stripping away theory and theatre, Fischer’s art teaches through the drama of transformation, collapse, and renewal.

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.

Solo exhibitions include “Skinny Sunrise,” Globus Public Art Project with Fondation Beyeler (2025); “Urs Fischer,” Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (2022); “The Lyrical and the Prosaic,” Aïshti Foundation, Beirut (2019); “ERROR,” The Brant Foundation Arty Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2019); “PLAY,” (with choreography by Madeline Hollander) Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (2019); “Big Clay #4 and 2 Tuscan Men,” Piazza della Signoria, Florence (2017); “The Public C the Private,” Legion of Honor Museum, San Francisco (2017); “Mon cher...,” Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, Arles (2017); “Small Axe,” Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2016); “Urs Fischer,” The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2013); “Madame Fisscher,” Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2012); “Skinny Sunrise,” Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2012); “Oscar the Grouch,” The Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2010); “Marguerite de Ponty,” New Museum, New York (2009); Cockatoo Island, Kaldor Art Projects and the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust, Sydney (2007); “Paris 1919,” Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2006); “Jet Set Lady,” Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan (2005); “Kir Royal,” Kunsthaus Zürich (2004); and “Not My House Not My Fire,” Espace 315, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2004).
Fischer’s work has been presented in numerous group exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (2003, 2007, and 2011); “Burning Down the House,” Gwangju Biennale (2014); and “Sequence 1: Painting and Sculpture in the François Pinault Collection,” Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2007). Fischer lives and works in Los Angeles.