Miķelis Fišers

Miķelis Fišers was one of the most prominent artists of the 1990s generation, who supplements his primary vocation of painting with experimental installations and objects. In his works and their interpretation, preserving the boundary between genuine belief in paranormal phenomena and public clowning, Fišers exploits human perception of the mythological world and presents superstition and esotericism as the new mythology of our time, which has become part of the reality of many people’s thinking and reality. Deep, humanistic ideas and reminders about power and violence often emerge with humour and visual naivety in the sublayers of the artist’s work, which pulses not only through politics and economics but also in spiritual, sexual, and artistic relationships. 

The painting series “Sex'n'Spaceships” was Miķeļis Fišers’ legendary diploma work at the Art Academy (a cycle of four paintings, of which two have survived), which provocatively challenged the perceptions of art held at the time and was censored. Behind the pornographic scenes ironically presented in the work, this context reveals far more serious questions about institutional power the pressure of traditions and the boundaries of stereotypes, which seek to subjugate the artist to their will just as brutally as the alien reptiles in Fišers’ fantasy world.

From the series “Sex'n'Spaceships”. 1995.