Urs Fischer's melting wax sculptures and Big Clay installation in Florence's Piazza della Signoria

For the second edition of InFlorence, Swiss artist Urs Fischer (born 1966 in Triengen) will install two melting wax figures on the Arengario of Palazzo Vecchio, between reproductions of Michelangelo's David and Donatello's Judith and Holofernes. The figures depict curator Francesco Bonami and gallerist Fabrizio Moretti, slowly dissolving over the event's duration as symbols of human finitude and art's permanence. In Piazza della Signoria, Fischer's 12-meter aluminum monument Big Clay bears the artist's fingerprints, metaphorizing the primal human gesture of shaping form. The project, conceived by Fabrizio Moretti and Sergio Risaliti and promoted by the Comune di Firenze, runs from September 22, 2017 to January 21, 2018, coinciding with the Biennale Internazionale dell'Antiquariato. Fischer gained notoriety at the 2011 Venice Biennale for a wax copy of Giambologna's Rape of the Sabine Women that melted. The first InFlorence edition in 2015 featured Jeff Koons, who received the city keys from mayor Dario Nardella for his Pluto and Proserpina and Gazing Ball (Barberini Faun) sculptures. In 2016, Jan Fabre installed Searching for Utopia and The man who measures the clouds in the piazza, along with a nocturnal performance on metamorphosis.