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It took Swiss artist Urs Fischer 17 years to perfect his 5-metre-high masterpiece made of thousands of loaves of bread.
The towering pile of sourdough, titled Bread House, looks like an alpine chalet and includes breathtaking structural details as well as Persian rugs scattered with breadcrumbs.
It’s meant to be a dark domestic fairytale inspired by Hansel and Gretel and as the 2 500 loaves of which it is constructed literally rot before your eyes, also a meditation on decay.
The life-sized piece was initially constructed outdoors in an empty lot in Vienna, Austria, with a local bakery making regular deliveries.
But putting it all together was a case of trial and error as Urs (48) struggled to find the perfect mortar. After experimenting unsuccessfully with raw dough and marzipan, he eventually discovered that polyurethane foam, usually used for heat and sound padding, was the perfect binding agent. He also used wooden beams and pillars for structural support.
He has been staging it since 2004, reconstructing it was new bread and adding different surprise elements – for instance, a past version was populated by young parakeets that got to feast on loaves.
But it sparked huge controversy in Austria when it was first
unveiled.
“Austria’s a very Catholic country,” Urs explains, “everyone there thought the bread was somehow about the body of Christ.”
Then when he exhibited Bread House at a New York gallery, “the discussion there was all about carbohydrates”, he says.
Since then he’s given up trying to tell people what “it
should be about” and has just left it open to interpretation.
And he’s hoping the innovative piece, which is currently on display at Art Basel in Switzerland, will find a buyer. If it speaks to you and feeds your soul you can buy it but it won’t come cheap – his agent is willing to consider offers from around $3 million (R44,4m).
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That’s a whole lot of dough for something that will soon be very stale.
Urs is renowned for his exceptional use of clay, paint or even dirt to create hyper-realistic works of art.
His introduction to the world of art first started off with photography and then he later ventured into painting and sculpture.
Urs says he draws inspiration from watching the world around
him. “The older I get, the more I try to just look and listen, to
observe,” he says.
“There are particular images that come to life through the process of creating. I’m curious about their nature. I never understand why some artworks are falling in place. It’s a mystery.”
Sources: Bloomberg, Arch Paper, Cob Social
