If London and YBA's (Young British Artists) are currently the pivotal point of the Contemporary Art world the ICA should be the main stage. How very surprising then to see that two foreign artists are the main exhibitors to start the new millennium: A Swedish photographer, Miriam Backstrom (born 1967, Stockholm) and Swiss sculptor Urs Fischer both unknown to UK audiences. Obviously disenchanted with YBA art the ICA introduces Fischer  as  "a breath of fresh air against a background of British Art dominated by video and painting".  Whilst the entire world scrambled to buy British the ICA went looking abroad for talent  and commissioned seven sculptures from Fischer. They are so pleased with the results now on display in Fischer's first UK show Without a Fist - Like A Bird  that another series of large and small-scale sculptures and drawings are in the planning stage. 
 

What in reality is a large brick wall with rotting apples around the base is given another meaning once installed in the sanctified walls of a gallery...  The artist explains:     "There are two visual extremes which are most frequently represented; extreme ugliness and extreme beauty. The work I make is between the two, so that the viewer has to engage more keenly. This area between the extremes is full of  contradiction and emotions about our daily struggle with life - you give up drink, go on a diet, and feel good about yourself, then trash the whole thing the next day, constantly swinging from one extreme to another."

Urs Fischer     Without a Fist - Like a Bird

Miriam Bäckström : is a career artist who has found her niche in taking photographs of empty interiors.  She is to photography what Rachel Whiteread with her 'House' is to sculpture. 
Just as Whiteread presented a haunting evocative work by making a cement cast of a derelict house about to be demolished, Backstrom photographs homes of the deceased and film sets to express the ephemeral. More recently she turned to capturing the pathetic tents of Stockholm's homeless. Careful never to photograph the inhabitants of these forlorn spaces, Backstrom leaves the viewer to question the limits of fact and fiction, time and memory. 
The photographs are beautifully executed large cibachromes on aluminium which is a relief after seeing a spate of shows recently where artists use photography without professionalism such as Gillian Wearing's trite attempt at docu-art. 
 

Miriam Bäckström Earthwork Site Near Bangalore, 1998 From the artist: "I spent some time studying interior design periodicals that deal  with how people define themselves by using propriety goods,  designer products and furniture. I see them as manuals to    different personalities or as a sort of contemporary    iconography."

Backstrom held her first solo exhibition at Stockholm's Moderna Museet in 1999 and went on to represent her country at the Venice Biennale. 

Miriam Bäckström
Exhibition :20 January  2000 - 27 February 2000

Urs Fischer 'Without a Fist - Like a Bird'
Exhibition : 20 January 2000 - 27 February 2000