Paintings: 1998–2011, 2012–2015, 2016–2017

Paintings is the first retrospective publication devoted solely to Urs Fischer's work on canvas, gathering two decades of output that runs from photographic collage to trompe-l'oeil illusion.

Issued as three paperback volumes covering 1998–2011, 2012–2015 and 2016–2017 and housed together in a slipcase, the set reproduces every painting Fischer made through 2017, prints many works to scale relative to one another, and includes select details printed 1:1. Published by Kiito-San in 2019, the 572-page set includes over six hundred color plates and early collage works that had not been exhibited in years.

Fischer (born 1973, Zurich) is best known for large sculptural and installation gestures — wax effigies that burn down over an exhibition's run, cast bronze fruit and vegetables, holes punched through gallery floors — and his paintings extend the same interest in illusion and appropriated imagery, often built from photographs, historical artworks and studio detritus layered digitally before being printed onto canvas.