Peter Fischli & David Weiss

Peter Fischli ( born June 8, 1952 in Zurich ) and David Weiss ( born June 21, 1946 in Zurich, † April 27, 2012 ibid ), often short Fischli / Weiss, was an artist duo worked together since 1979. They were among the most renowned contemporary artists of Switzerland. Her best-known work is the film " The Way Things Go ", which during the documenta 8 became a popular success in 1987 and made ​​her internationally famous.

For their work they used a wide range of artistic expressions from film to photography and artists' books to sculptures made from various materials and multimedia installations. They adapted objects and situations of everyday life that they brought with humor and irony in an artistic context and presented as philosophical and theoretical questions concerning the explanation of the world.

See art critics in the often parodic attitude of their work parallels to the artists Marcel Duchamp, Dieter Roth and Jean Tinguely.

Fischli / Weiss represented multiple Switzerland at the Venice Biennale and other international cultural events. Both lived and worked in Zurich.

• 2.1 Movies
• 2.2 Photo Series
• 2.3 sculptures
• 2.4 installations
• 2.5 Publications / Art books

• 5.1 Individual Exhibitions
• 5.2 Exhibitions (Selection )

Biography and Education

Peter Fischli

Peter Fischli studied from 1975 to 1976 at the Academia dei Belle Arti in Urbino and 1976-1977 Academia dei Belle Arti in Bologna. Before teaming up with David Weiss he set out, inter alia, in the Academy in Bologna.

David Weiss graduated from 1963 to 1964 the foundation course at the Zurich School of Design and then studied until 1965 sculpture at the School of Art Basel. Prior to his collaboration with Peter Fischli he presented from 1976 to 1979 in several European galleries. From 1970 to 1979, he published books in collaboration with Urs Lüthi. In September 2011, White became ill with cancer. He died on April 27, 2012 in Zurich.

Work (selection)

The first joint work of the two 1979 was " sausage Series ", a series of ten photographs for which they arranged and sliced ​​sausages with waste found in your own refrigerator to different situations of everyday life, such as a carpet shop, a traffic accident or a fashion show. In 1980, she turned her first film on Super 8 in " The Least Resistance " walk the two as a bear and rat disguised by Hollywood, questioning life and write a book.

"I hate this mess in the world. Nothing works. Everything is hopeless and sad. "

The intercepted everyday, sometimes seemingly banal subjects and objects get by their statement that they are related to each other or unexpectedly emerge in the context of a museum or exhibition. In the film " Visible World " they put pictures of the Swiss Central Plateau to the sub-tropical rainforest and the sunset in Venice next to the city of Los Angeles. The series " Untitled ( Flowers) " united by double exposure photographs of flowers of different places in the world in an image. Often series emerged from work that is sometimes performed for years on. This work can stand alone on their own or be seen in relationship to each other. A typical example is the series "Airport", a collection of photographs of situations at airports, which were summarized in a picture book in 1989, but continues to the present day.

In her photo series, they portrayed everyday scenes, such as at airports, on vacation or suburban homes. The works were created during numerous travels, but also in the direct environment of her hometown Zurich. The installations and sculptures, such as the " under the stairs " at the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt, got their ambiguity by the materials used, often polyurethane, so that they can be distinguished only by the reduced weight of real objects.

In later years, multimedia installations and projections belonged to her work, as her contribution to the Biennale 2003. Hundreds, seemingly meaningless questions like " Why is this happening never nothing? If a bus? Was I never quite awake? Come opinions of yourself? Do I look like a landscape with a house where you can go imagine the death and a bed is where you can sleep? Are my juices? The dog barks all night? Is there a world without me? Is my stupidity a warm coat "? Were projected in rapid succession on the wall, without giving answers. For the work they received the Golden Lion for the best work of art of the Biennale.

Her work is represented in numerous museums around the world, such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Kunsthaus in Zurich, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt am Main or the art collection of North Rhine -Westphalia.

Movies

Photo Series

Sculptures

Installations

Publications / Art books

• " Sausage Photographs ", 7 /10 of the staged photographs printed in HOW TO magazine # 2, 2007, ISSN 1864-8614
• " Peter Fischli & David Weiss. Fotografias " Walther König, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-88375-974-0
• " The Way Things Go ", PAL DVD, 2005; ISBN 978-90-5469-144-0
• " Will Happiness Find Me? " Walther König, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-88375 -630 X
• " Visible World ", Walther König, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-88375-433-1
• " Musée d' Art Moderne Paris ", 35 individual art prints, Walther König, Cologne 2000
• "Gardens ", Edition Florian Matzner, octagon, Cologne 1998, ISBN 3-89611-043-8
• " Settlements, agglomeration ", Edition Patrick Frey, Zurich 1992
• " Pictures, views " Edition Patrick Frey, Zurich / Secession, Vienna 1990
• " Airports", photo book, Edition Patrick Frey / IVAM, Valencia 1989
• " The Way Things Go ", VHS tape, 1989 ( see also Movies )
• Elizabeth Armstrong, Arthur C. Danto, Boris Groys: "In a Restless World", 1996, ISBN 0-935640-51-7 (English)