Urs Fischer’s Wave for Paris+ by Art Basel

Specifically installed by Paris+ by Art Basel was Urs Fischer’s Wave. The work was on view at Place Vendôme in Paris last week. Wave is the sixth sculpture in Fischer’s series Big Clays. Despite their imposing scale, these works always begin with a small piece or pieces of clay shaped in the artist’s hand. Fischer describes this process as “a sensual and repetitive gesture, like a bodily motion,” which he ends prior to conscious intervention. After making hundreds of such forms, he selects only one to be digitally scanned and carved at an enlarged scale. Unlike a cast form or a digital replica, the resulting work preserves the nuanced tactility of the original maquette, magnifying its details—down to the artist’s fingerprints—into a monument.