Urs Fischer "Abstract Slavery"

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Peter Brant has given Swiss artist Urs Fischer the run of his bucolic Greenwich, Connecticut-based Brant Foundation Art Study Center, resulting in an irreverent, cunning portrait of the collector. Using wallpaper and wax, Fischer raises poignant questions about mortality, reproduction and the very nature of art accumulation.

Brant’s reputation as a longtime collector is well known, but there was still something startling about standing in a two dimensional likeness of his home, filled with so many expensive artworks, reduced to flat copies.  The wallpaper piece, which reproduces Brant’s Warhols and Lichtensteins, alongside shelves arrayed with art books, family photos and silver polo trophies, is pointedly titled “Abstract Slavery.”

To further the point, Brant’s waxy likeness, a life-size human candle, melts amid the material trophies.

Though I couldn’t get an credible explanation from Fischer’s dealer Gavin Brown or Brant or anyone else about the show’s ironic Oscar the Grouch title, the squat green Muppet is best known for his compulsive hoarding of trash.

This is a show well worth seeing. It’s open by appointment through Spring 2011. (To schedule an appointment, email thebrantfoundation@gmail.com)

Last weekend I visited the foundation, camera in tow. Brant sat down with me and shared his thoughts on the exhibition.

Click here to watch video.

Oscar the Grouch from Lindsay Pollock on Vimeo.