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 is still something startling about seeing 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. There has been no credible explanation from anyone involved about the show’s ironic Oscar the Grouch title. Oscar is the squat green Muppet best known for his compulsive hoarding of trash!
