Quotes from Urs Fischer

Take a relief. You draw it, you carve it out. Later you build it up from a flat surface. There is no other way to do a sculpture - you either add or you subtract.

I think when tattoos are new and colorful, they look bad. But they look better the older and more bleached out they become.

Life is one long decay, no? There's a lot of beauty in it. Like the patina in an old city.

I always have a lot of things going on because some things take years to make and others take five minutes. I like that there's always something going on. Working doesn't have such a momentous feel - like it's all or nothing.

I love seeing tattoos on 60-year-olds who have had them for 40 years.

I think it's bad for human beings to be artists. It's awful. You want to do something but you're constantly trying to decide what you want to do. Let's just say it's no place like Hawaii.

What is the art world? I never really understood. I started doing this stuff to do what I want to do. Not to be this or that.

You basically only discover a new thing once.

Many artists who don't go off to art school come to New York. It's about what you learn when you're here.

I could see the works just living in reproductions. The work lives on like fantasy. Some live even better as just an image.