Pace Partners with Urs Fischer to Launch NFT Native Series, CHAOS

Urs Fischer, widely considered one of the greatest living artists, will step into the NFT (non-fungible token) world with a series native to the medium. Introducing CHAOS, 501 original works in the form of unique digital sculptures. The first NFT within the CHAOS series, CHAOS #1 Human, will be sold in a live auction on Fair Warning, a hyper-curated auction app, on April 11th, 5 PM EDT. Fair Warning was founded by Loïc Gouzer, ex-Co-Chairman of Christie’s, known for selling the most expensive artwork ever—Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi for $450.3 million. There will be a series of drops over the following weeks, kicking off on April 12th, on MakersPlace, a premier NFT marketplace for digital art. NFTs from the series will also be available through Pace Gallery, an industry leading gallery with a reputation for pioneering projects at the intersection of art and technology, starting in mid-May. The Urs Fischer NFT release marks the first time a major gallery enters the world of cryptoart. This unique collaboration between the three organizations was coalesced in order to offer the best venue to showcase this groundbreaking new body of work by Fischer.

Each NFT in CHAOS consists of two unique objects (an array of familiar objects to people today) that have been 3D scanned. They are set on a colliding course in motion and orbit. The sculptures, operating as an archeology of the present, are intended to manifest in any format that is capable of displaying, playing, or showing a 3D sculpture in motion. They will exist in any space be it virtual, real, or a fusion of the two, now and forever, through current and future technology. Successful buyers will come away with Fischer’s work as an NFT, which is composed of a reference rendering and the underlying data to construct the work in any future digital space.

The culmination of the project is CHAOS #501 Human, a single entity NFT uniting all one-thousand objects represented in #1-#500.

As the NFTs are released, they will populate a dedicated website (opens in a new window) www.CHAOSOAHCHAOS.com that will launch on April 12th. The works will also populate Fischer’s Instagram (opens in a new window) @CHAOSursfischer.

Fischer is a giant of the contemporary art world and undoubtedly one of the most important artists working today. His work defies limits. In his own words, “anything can be used to create art—your mind, your hand, your elbow or toe.” This outlook makes his work engaging, playful, and timeless. He first garnered international attention with two notable exhibitions: you at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York in 2007, where in a grand subversive gesture he excavated an eight-foot deep crater within the gallery walls; and 2009’s Marguerite de Ponty at New Museum, New York where for the first time in the museum’s history, an artist was given carte blanche to the entirety of the building.

In addition to the monumental Big Clay series, as seen at iconic landmarks such as Seagram Plaza, New York, and Piazza della Signoria, Florence, Fischer’s Problem Paintings have been woven into the cultural fabric. In this celebrated painting series, Fischer employs non-hierarchical handling of once-famous icons obstructed by universally quotidian objects. Commissioned by the 54th Venice Biennial 2011, in the grandest example of his well-known candle series, Fischer metamorphized one of the most quintessential mannerist sculptures, Giambologna’s 16th century Rape of the Sabines from fixed, cold marble to an actively-lit and melting larger-than-life wax candle.

Fischer is an artist who has continuously embraced new technology to give life to his artistic ideas throughout his impressive career. The concept of CHAOS has been in the making for the last three decades and has now found its ultimate expression through the NFT medium.