Urs Fischer

The set of work i am focusing on is called "Problem Painting". The "problem" of the painting is that a object obstructs each man or woman in the image. There is also a correlation between the object and the face. The people in the images are of Hollywood publicity shots but Fishers doesn't want this to be the main focus of the image.

Here is a question asked to Fischer in an interview: In these works, you’re referring to a particular era of Hollywood’s Golden Age. It’s a specific way of sculpting an image of a person that is not personal; it’s idealised. Actually, it’s not about the faces in the background so much as the things in the foreground. My daughter comes in and she doesn’t say: “Oh, that’s Veronica Lake.” She says: “Lemon! Mushroom! Salad!” The things in the foreground are much more universal than the things in the background. That’s what people misunderstand because they look at the wrong layer of the painting. 

I think this is interesting; What the “Problem Paintings” do not do, by design, is portray a middle. Born from the artist’s frustration that so much visual creativity that happens on screens never gains dimensionality because it looks so bad when printed out, these are illustrations of monumental flatness. There may not be as much there as in his other works, but that may be part of the point.

I think from reading this that he wants the viewer to focus on the layers of the image and not just the famous Hollywood celeb but the objects in the foreground as much. 

I have added these images into my research as they are relating to identity and covering up partly who they are. I like the style of the images but i know i have been looking at paint and other mixed medias but this itself objects is another way i could approach my work.