Fischli/Weiss retrospective opens in Zurich

Kunsthaus.ch

The Zurich Kunsthaus fine arts museum is hosting Switzerland's first retrospective of award-winning contemporary Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss.

The show, put on in collaboration with London’s Tate Modern, is called “Questions & Flowers” and runs from June 6 to September 9.

Organised with the artists’ support, “Questions & Flowers” boasts the most comprehensive overview to date of an oeuvre as varied as it is enigmatic.

Fischli and Weiss have been collaborating since 1979 and have contributed significantly to the international renown of contemporary Swiss art.

Using a wide range of artistic forms of expression including sculptures, photographs and film, Fischli/Weiss adapt everyday objects and situations and place them in an artistic context, often using humour and irony.

Their best-known work is “The Way Things Go (Der Lauf der Dinge)”, a half-hour film of everyday objects such as tires, rubbish bags, ladders, soap and petrol interacting in one long chain reaction.

“The Way Things Go”, which was created in 1987, is unmistakeably similar to Honda’s 2003 award-winning commercial “Cog” – to such an extent that the Swiss allegedly threatened legal action.

Popular appeal

Fischli/Weiss took on the world of objects soon after beginning their collaboration, using kneading, carving and casting to create sculptures from unusually “ordinary” material.

In their first joint creation, “The Sausage Photographs”, the playfully experimental direction of their work is already evident – a dramatic scene, such as a car crash, is composed using sausages, various cold meats and common household goods.

Critics have often seen parallels in the parodying nature of their work to Swiss artists Dieter Roth and Jean Tinguely or French Dadaist and surrealist Marcel Duchamp.

For example “Suddenly this Overview”, a collection of hundreds of small, unfired clay figures – in “various important and unimportant events in the history of mankind and of the planet”, according to Weiss – plays on the Swiss reputation for order and regulation.

The scenes they selected include “Herr and Frau Einstein shortly after the conception of their son, the genius Albert”, and “Mick Jagger and Brian Jones going home satisfied after composing ‘I can’t get no satisfaction'”.

The art of Fischli/Weiss has contributed to debates about a post-avant-garde while appealing to a broad public – confirmed at recent shows in London and Paris.

Britain’s Guardian newspaper reckoned the exhibition at the Tate Modern was “not to be missed”, describing Fischli/Weiss as “the great comedians of contemporary art” and “The Way Things Go” as “a masterpiece… as exhilarating for an adult as a child”.

New material

The ambitious “Visible World” (1987-2000) is given considerable scope in the exhibition in view of the project’s role in the development of the popular series “Airports”, “Flowers” and “Mushrooms”.

“Visible World” features on a 30-metre illuminated viewing table on which 3,000 slides have been arranged.

Connoisseurs of the duo’s work will also find things to discover in Zurich. For example the artists’ long-time friend, the former art critic Patrick Frey, used a video camera to document some of the elaborate tests for their 16mm film.

The material has been edited for the exhibition and gives viewers more than just a glimpse backstage: it is also an exposé of the half-serious, half-comic foundation of the Fischli/Weiss project – a search for meaning in meaninglessness.

This is the basis of their claim to a place in art history. With its presentation of “Questions & Flowers”, the Zurich museum invites visitors into the world of two artists whose intention has always been to share that world with others.

swissinfo

Peter Fischli and David Weiss

The two have worked together since 1979. Both live and work in Zurich.

In 2006 Fischli/Weiss won the Roswitha Haftmann Prize, Europe’s best-endowed award for contemporary art.

David Weiss

1946 Born in Zurich
1963–1965 Preliminary course, School of Applied Arts Zurich and sculpture class, Basel
1975 Solo exhibitions at the galleries Staehli, Zurich and De Appel, Amsterdam.

Peter Fischli

1952 Born in Zurich
1975-1978 Accademia di Belle Arti, Urbino and Bologna
Solo exhibitions at the galleries Gugu Ernesto, Cologne
1979 and Venster, Rotterdam