L’OFFICIEL ART, OCTOBER, 2018
URS FISCHER & MADELINE HOLLANDER ON PLAY AT GAGOSIAN, NEW YORK
Interview by Lola Kramer
An interview conducted on the occasion of PLAY, conceived by artist Urs Fischer with choreography by artist Madeline Hollander at Gagosian in New York City from September 6–October 13, 2018.
The machine perpetuates its binary beat.
—Federico García Lorca, “Ode to Salvador Dalí” (1926)
Play is the origin of fiction.
—Urs Fischer
‘At the intersection of sculpture, behavior, and choreography, PLAY is an arena of chance encounters where visitors are invited to interact with nine office chairs that seem to have lives of their own.
Play, a ritual older than humankind, has set rules that distinguish it from reality, but it has no clear aim or value other than itself. Instead, it is merely a feedback loop, a push/pull of energy, bound by time and place. Accordingly, the chairs seem to behave in such ways as to belie some level of predictability—only to then debunk the illusion.
The more the viewer seeks to control the chairs, the clearer it becomes that they are not pawns or pets but participants. By attempting to understand the choreography, we actually create it, enacting the very patterns that we wish to decode.’