Edited with introduction by Meredith Mowder. Text by Klaus Biesenbach, Gavin Brown, Jeffrey Deitch, Warren Fischer, Casey Spooner.
A chronicle of Fischerspooner’s quest to merge art, music and performance
Founded by artists Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner in 1998, Fischerspooner began as a philosophical provocation that sought to explore the expressive potential located in the gap between popular entertainment and art. Soon swelling from a duo to an army of dancers, stylists, photographers and musicians, the group has activated a variety of spaces such as traditional concert halls, nightclubs, construction sites, parades, art galleries and museums. Their Brechtian theatrics lay bare the potential honesty of spectacle and device by not only revealing their inner workings but also celebrating them. Fischerspooner ultimately proposes that artifice and surface can be recombined to create a new concept of authenticity--a “new truth.” This kaleidoscopic monograph provides unprecedented insight into the first five years of the Fischerspooner project. From a debut performance in a New York City Starbucks, to a blitz of the international art world, to more mainstream visibility via a major label recording contract, New Truth chronicles Fischerspooner’s quest to profoundly upend the boundaries of art, music and performance. Invested in liminal spaces and the in-between, Fischerspooner also captures a unique millennial moment that seemed to prophesy a future where the avant-garde could be translated into a vernacular of pure joy.
Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner met at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and formed Fischerspooner in New York in 1998. As an art pop performance project, Fischerspooner’s practice involves music, dance, fashion, film and photography. They have released three full-length music albums, #1 (2001), Odyssey (2005) and Entertainment (2009).
Featured image is reproduced from Fischerspooner: New Truth. Scroll down for video from the NYC signing.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Elle Magazine
Noah Silverstein
A revealing look at the origins of fashion's favorite gruesome face-paint-and-fake-hair-wearing art pop provocateurs, who got their start playing in a Starbucks in New York's East Village in 1998.
"'Fake it 'til you make it!' Casey Spooner would say. Did Fischerspooner successfully fake it, or make it? To this day, I'm still not sure," writes MoMA PS1 Director Klaus Biesenbach in the deluxe new Fischerspooner retrospective monograph New Truth. "What even separates truth from fiction in their world, and does it even matter?" Join Casey Spooner and Warren Fischer for the book launch this Tuesday night, October 28 at VFILES on Mercer Street in Soho. In addition to the book, VFILES will have a reissue of the classic Fischerspooner T-shirt featured in the book. Biesenbach concludes, "Like may other socially-engaged artists, Fischerspooner overturned the classic arrangement between artist, art object, and audience; artist turns into a glamorous army, art object becomes spectacular performance, and audiences becomes loyal fans. Through their utilization of readymade forms of entertainment, coupled with the insurgence of digital media and the Internet, Fischerspooner infiltrated the popular consciousness and manipulated the means of production to a degree, to the extent that they could put forth a utopian relationship between art and the social. My personal connection to Fischerspooner is emblematic of their effect—we were all brought into their world, enraptured, perplexed, and uncertain what were claims and what was fame." continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.75 x 12 in. / 336 pgs / illustrated throughout. LIST PRICE: U.S. $50.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $67.5 ISBN: 9788862083287 PUBLISHER: Damiani AVAILABLE: 10/31/2014 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA
Published by Damiani. Edited with introduction by Meredith Mowder. Text by Klaus Biesenbach, Gavin Brown, Jeffrey Deitch, Warren Fischer, Casey Spooner.
A chronicle of Fischerspooner’s quest to merge art, music and performance
Founded by artists Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner in 1998, Fischerspooner began as a philosophical provocation that sought to explore the expressive potential located in the gap between popular entertainment and art. Soon swelling from a duo to an army of dancers, stylists, photographers and musicians, the group has activated a variety of spaces such as traditional concert halls, nightclubs, construction sites, parades, art galleries and museums. Their Brechtian theatrics lay bare the potential honesty of spectacle and device by not only revealing their inner workings but also celebrating them. Fischerspooner ultimately proposes that artifice and surface can be recombined to create a new concept of authenticity--a “new truth.” This kaleidoscopic monograph provides unprecedented insight into the first five years of the Fischerspooner project. From a debut performance in a New York City Starbucks, to a blitz of the international art world, to more mainstream visibility via a major label recording contract, New Truth chronicles Fischerspooner’s quest to profoundly upend the boundaries of art, music and performance. Invested in liminal spaces and the in-between, Fischerspooner also captures a unique millennial moment that seemed to prophesy a future where the avant-garde could be translated into a vernacular of pure joy.
Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner met at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and formed Fischerspooner in New York in 1998. As an art pop performance project, Fischerspooner’s practice involves music, dance, fashion, film and photography. They have released three full-length music albums, #1 (2001), Odyssey (2005) and Entertainment (2009).
