Leonardo DiCaprio Had an ‘Open Mind’ When He Commissioned Artist Urs Fischer to Make This Unusual Family Portrait

Urs Fischer coyly titled his new exhibition, now on view at
Gagosian in Paris, “Leo,” and the announcement contained no
information apart from a vague image of a torso facing another
body. But if you look closely at that torso, you’ll figure out that
it is a very, very famous torso—and there’s no mistaking that the
“Leo” of the show’s title refers to the Oscar-winning actor,
environmental activist, and art collector Leonardo DiCaprio.

At last night’s opening at Gagosian’s space on Due de Ponthieu,
steps away from the Tuileries gardens, a thick crowd of Parisians
and people in town for FIAC flooded the entryway, trying to get a
glimpse of what exactly the Fischer was doing with the star of
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Upon entering I witnessed a scrum of people huddled around the
statue installed at the center of the gallery. I sifted through the
people—including Larry Gagosian himself, surrounded by collectors
such as Delphine Arnault and Maja Hoffmann, artists such as Marcus
Jahmal and Jean-Marie Appriou, curator Francesco Bonami, dealers
Bill Powers and Sadie Coles, and a man rocking bonkers-awesome Rick
Owens high-heeled boots—and saw that the focus of the oohs and
ahhhs was one of Fischer’s wax figurines, which are activated by
lighting a candle on the top of the head. This melts the material,
and the work of art eventually gets reduced to a pool of wax
splattered on the floor.

Those who buy them—and they sell for almost as much as $1
million—can get the whole thing refabricated at cost ($50,000,
in 2017) and delivered back to their home, ready to be melted
again, and ordered again, and melted again, ad infinitum.

And, indeed, the man melting in Paris was Leo DiCaprio. That
night the lit candle had taken off some of Leo’s forehead, and by
today Leo’s skull is probably gone. Intriguingly, Leo isn’t
depicted solo, but with his parents, George DiCaprio and Irmelin
Indenbirken, who divorced when Leo was 1 year old. He was mostly
brought up by his mom, who often accompanies her son to awards
ceremonies and, sometimes, art openings. Intriguingly, in the
sculpture, mom and dad are each interacting with a different Leo:
from that very, very famous torso springs not one but two Leos,
each with a full Leo head ready to be melted down. With his mom,
he’s embraced in a bear hug and has plastered across his face that
goofy Leo smile that’s known around the world. With his dad, Leo’s
staring off into the distance—a distant Leo, an introspective
Leo.

I wanted to ask Fischer about the twin Leo heads, but he had
wandered off from his own opening, as he does from time to time, a
studio manager explained. He actually just went a block away, to a
cafe where the crowds at the show were still visible, to chat with
Jasmine Tsou—the proprietor of New York’s beloved JTT gallery,
where Fischer had a brief but brilliant pop-up show in 2017.

Fischer eventually came back to the gallery, and we found a spot
to chat. “Leo initially approached me to do a portrait—some people
approach me, you know,” Fischer said. “I know him, and I know
everybody that I make the portraits of in one way or another. And I
thought for a second, and I asked if he could do it with his
parents. He said yeah, he was totally game, it was cool all the
way. We all met, and we tried to figure out, and we went in with an
open mind.”

I asked if Leo had seen pictures of the work (sadly, the real
Leo was not present at the opening to pose alongside the wax Leo,
which is actually bigger than the real one by about a
foot.) “I don’t know if the parents saw it but, but I sent him
photos, while it was in the process, and when it was finished,”
Fischer said.

While the work at the gallery is for sale, Leo commissioned it
from Urs and will receive an artist’s proof, as is customary for
those who the artist depicts in wax. The images were
drawn from real interactions between the three of them, as
they all posed for the artist together and he created scans of
their interactions.

Fischer’s wax sculptures have always been conceptual works that
acquire power as they disappear—and the process of destroying the
thing and then buying a new version of the work for a fraction of
what the original version of the statue cost is a pretty great
commentary on this whole business—but this disappearing
double-portrait makes for one of the best shows up in Paris right
now because it achieves another kind of transformation. Here,
Fischer has rendered one of the most recognizable faces in the
world, the face of Leo, into a child of divorce, into something as
simple as the son of a mother and a father.

“It’s like all of us—we all have parents, man, like it or not,”
Fischer said. “Sometimes we like them and sometimes we don’t.
That’s kind of how it goes.”

The post Leonardo DiCaprio Had an ‘Open Mind’ When He
Commissioned Artist Urs Fischer to Make This Unusual Family
Portrait appeared first on artnet News.