Installation view Urs Fischer: Lovers Museo Jumex, 2022 (Urs Fischer created 'Lovers #2', a ... [+] site-specific monumental sculpture for his first solo show in Latin America)

Ascending nearly 33 feet from the base, a triumphant embrace of cast aluminum, stainless steel, and gold leaf unites two elegant forms that equipoise each other. The monumental sculpture outside Museo Jumex in Mexico City directs our gaze upward and around its massive presence, emitting vital energy and joy in a world that’s ravenous for affinity and meaningful human interaction.

World-renowned Swiss-born contemporary visual artist Urs Fischer created Lovers #2, a site-specific monumental sculpture for his first solo show in Latin America, organized by Museo Jumex with guest curator Francesco Bonami. Installed on the museum’s triangular plaza in the luxurious Polanco neighborhood in the Miguel Hidalgo borough, Lovers #2 compliments the building designed by British architect David Chipperfield which stands out amid an array of imposing commercial structures. Moreover, it underscores and unifies the diversity of 25 years of work borrowing from and re-imaging Pop, Surrealism, Dada, Rococo, and Conceptualism, that defines Fischer’s oeuvre spanning collage, sculpture, painting, and large-scale installation.

“This kind of movement of the sculpture outside was somewhat based on sensual moments … this moment of the gold is connected to the body,” explained Fischer. “Gold is everything that's around us, it reflects. … Gold is hyper-aware of its surroundings … It has a warmth, that’s why we can use it for our teeth. It is something that is sensual.”

Installation view Urs Fischer: Lovers Museo Jumex, 2022 (Urs Fischer created 'Lovers #2', a ... [+] site-specific monumental sculpture for his first solo show in Latin America)

Love, or “lovers” is the connective tissue that draws together a vast body of clever work that oscillates between the absurd and the unfeigned. It’s tender and torrid, enveloping and invigorating us through myriad emotions that invite us back into a post-lockdown world where we seek to connect with individuals, experiences, and objects that genuinely feed our psyche.

“I thought maybe the title for the thing outside is a good title for a lot of other stuff. And in this way, we just put things together without trying to shape a clear narrative,” Fischer told me during an interview last Thursday, after a press conference and walkthrough of the airy, expansive galleries. “It's good to put something new that also connects here.”

The stunning exhibition is on view through September 18, and the colossal Lovers #2 will remain outside Museo Jumex for a year, said Fischer.

“Everything is in the title. Lovers is an exhibition about taking care of each other, taking care of people, and love of every form and shape,” said Bonami, a celebrated independent curator who has collaborated with Fischer on group shows in Europe since 1996. “I think … Mexico City is the first city in the world to have a monument devoted to love and it's a monument that doesn't matter how things go, it can’t be canceled. How history goes, love is always part of history … you cannot take it away because it’s always contemporary, it’s always about life and the relationship with people.”

One of the smallest works, Noisette (2009), delivers the biggest impact, eliciting giggles and squeals. A motion sensor detects when you pass by a conspicuous hole in the wall, and an electric motor dispenses a lifelike human tongue made of silicone.

Installation view Urs Fischer: Lovers Museo Jumex, 2022. R-L: 'Things' (2017);

We return to stupendous scale, shifting to the focal point of the first floor gallery with Things (2017), circling the 125¼-inch-by-204⅜-inch-by-118½-inch milled aluminum, steel, power magnets, and two-component epoxy adhesive rhinoceros that conveys motion as it attracts a discordant assemblage of quotidian personal, home, and office objects. A Louis Vuitton handbag, a copy machine, a car door, a vacuum cleaner, a shovel, a bicycle helmet, a toilet, a bucket, a high-heeled boot, a car tire, a lawnmower, a travel neck pillow, a chair, a stool, a Nike sneaker, a cinderblock, a bag of chips, a miniature kangaroo and its baby, a laptop, and a table, pass through the rhino, defying gravity. The life size rhino, born from a 3D scan of a taxidermy animal, coexists with the bizarre melange, reinforcing the underlying togetherness essential for love.

Fischer’s fluidity across mediums and genres is emblematic of the loving embrace he evokes, whether working with clay, steel, wax, bread, dirt, vegetables, or fruit, his work challenges how we perceive and react to our surroundings and encounters.

Installation view Urs Fischer: Lovers Museo Jumex, 2022 (Melody [2019], plaster, water-based ... [+] polyurethane paint, stainless steel, and nylon filament

We must make room, mindfully ducking our heads as we seek intentional space to pass through Melody (2019), plaster, water-based polyurethane paint, stainless steel, and nylon filament raindrops in pastels and grayscale meticulously suspended from the ceiling and occupying the majority of the second floor gallery. Our careful navigation gives pause, challenging what we see. My 11-year-old son Michael Alexander observed how the raindrops hint at meteorites, the otherworldly sensation suspended as we look down to spy a pair of mechanical snails on the ground. Maybe (2019), composed of motors, gears, aluminum, battery, brass, silicone, magnets, two-component urethane casting resin, acrylic paint, xanthan gum, gum arabic, and ethanol, simulate the snails’ natural movement by waves of contraction and expansion, using one foot that extends gingerly and then pulls the rest of its body forward.

Installation view Urs Fischer: Lovers Museo Jumex, 2022. On the right: Urs Fischer 'You Can Not Win' ... [+] (2003)

Entering the third floor gallery, we’re greeted by Noisette, welcoming us into a landscape of sculptures and paintings produced over more than 25 years, revealing the evolution and self-referential nature of Fischer’s creative process. We journey through at history, reminded of Marcel Duchamp’s readymades while wandering into the present toward You Can Not Win (2003), a chair precariously erected by its back legs and a massive cigarette lighter married with polystyrene, acrylic paint, Aqua-Resin, screws, and fiberglass, that Fischer revisited for his new exploration of the NFT (non-fungible token).

“It's about us, like how you relate to yourself and how you relate to others,” Fischer said of the exhibition.