Office theme / addiction / mhh camera

At first sight an image held by three pins on a vertical support, Office theme/addiction/mhh camera is a trompe-l'oeil work that deconstructs the viewer's gaze. The issue of the gaze is pre-eminent here: central in the work, an eye, reduced to a white hole, blindly stares at us. Reduced to its contours outlined with make-up, it externalizes an emotion through the thick tear that beads and flows to its corner.

Recalling Urs Fischer's training as a photographer, Office theme/addiction/mhh camera goes beyond flat materiality. It is a photomontage in many dimensions: the realistically painted pins suggest a fake three-dimensionality while stressing the two-dimensionality of the photograph. But what about the tear, with its almost palpable materiality?

A work that explores the truth of the gaze, Urs Fischer's Office theme/addiction/mhh camera is in the Pinault Collection. It was first exhibited in 2007 at the "Sequence 1" show at the Palazzo Grassi.