Urs Fischer: can one man reignite the art world?

Every so often an artist captures a moment of critical and commercial acclaim. Right now, the moment belongs to Urs Fischer, a 38-year-old Swiss-born, New York-based artist whose solo show opens today at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in Manhattan. There's a lot riding on it - and him.

Fischer is the collective choice to lead contemporary art out of the post-boom doldrums. No one is quite sure if the artists who prospered in the boom - Richard Prince, Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami et al - can shake off the associations of excess and drive their ponies on. Fischer, by contrast, almost certainly can.

Judging by an impressive turn-out of the art world cognoscenti, high-profile collectors and gallery and salesroom mafia at the private view, he's had the support to make it to art super-stardom ever since he dug an acutely of-the-moment construction site hole in Gavin Brown's Manhattan gallery at the height of the financial meltdown last eyar.

Often regarded as the natural successor to Jeff Koons but influenced mightily by Dieter Roth, Fischer has in the past created sculptures from materials including melting wax and rotting vegetables; he's built houses of bread and constructed huge teddy bears with table lamps sliced through their heads. Fischer's New Museum show, titled Marguerite de Ponty, is an optimistic affair and the first solo exhibition ever presented by this downtown institution.

Fischer does not seek to impress on us any social message. Instead, he's created a 21st Century Through The Looking Glass world of images and objects. It's a playful, engaging arrangement, highly experiential, and far removed from the ironic detachment that has became the art world's default post-boom position.

In one room, there's a labyrinth of mirrored boxes with high-resolution images of objects from a Manhattan streetscape; in another, massive aluminium castings of fist-squeezed clay models. Elsewhere there's a bendy pink streetlamp and a melted grand piano. A tongue pokes out from a hole in the wall - except when its approached. Nothing not to like, in other words.

"He's capturing an aesthetic balance between things that fall to pieces and things that have presence," says curator Massimiliano Gioni. "Abstraction, figuration, digital and physical culture co-exist in his work. Something can be beautifully shiny but also corrupted. These are very contemporary combinations."

Urs Fischer at the New Museum, 235 Bowery, New York Ciuty, continues until January 24, 2010