The next Artists You Need To Know are Peter Fischli & David Weiss.
Known as Fischli/Weiss, they are two Swiss artists that began a collaboration in 1979 and continued until Weiss’ death in 2012. Their works were irreverent with a dark humour that often had critics describing their work as being ‘post apocalyptic’ (such as in their best known work Der Lauf der Dinge [The Way Things Go], a film they created in 1987).
Working in the media of photography, video, sculpture and installation, their works “were replete with wit and discovery, presenting everyday materials in absurd and humorous contexts. Much of their work is in dialogue with the theories espoused by Dada and Fluxus artists, including Marcel Duchamp and [previously featured Artist You Need To Know] Dieter Roth.” (from Artnet)
Fischli offered that “the unpleasant and pleasant should inexplicably overlap in a sort of beautiful, feverish madness, in the end imploding under an overwhelming number of interpretive possibilities.”
The images below are from Wurstserie (The Sausage Series), created in 1979 as their first collaboration : “The ten photographs in this series reveal a very humorous use of domestic spaces.
By going into the oven, bed, freezer and bathtub, the two artists present a totally zany imaginary life in which sausages, along with other familiar objects and even detritus, take center stage. The passion for play, a true privilege of youth, is a fundamental component of Fischli and Weiss’s work, as is the use of the most common everyday objects. Quirky reconstructions replete with historical, cinematic and social references take the viewer on a strange journey.”
Peter Fischli was born in 1952 and David Weiss was born in 1946, both in Zurich, Switzerland.
Weiss had an early passion for music which led to his attending, at the age of 16, the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich. After dabbling in interior design, graphic design and photography, Weiss began to explore the possibility of being an artist. He would go on to study at the Kunstgewerbeschule, Basel for the period of 1964 to 1965, and would also work in the field of sculpture with the artists Alfred Gruber (Basel) and Jacqueline Stieger (England). He also worked at Expo 67 in Montreal (QC, Canada) on the way to New York City where Weiss was exposed to the minimalist art movement that was popular at the time. For nearly a decade (from 1970 to 1979) he collaborated on a number of book works with fellow Swiss conceptual artist Urs Lüthi (whom he had met while attending the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich years before. During this same period, focusing primarily on black ink drawings, Weiss had a number of exhibitions of his own work in Amsterdam, Cologne, and Rotterdam.
Fischli grew up amidst a number of artists greatly influenced by the Bauhaus aesthetic, and would study at the Accademia di Bella Arti in Urbino and the Academy of Arts in Bologna (both in Italy).
The two met in 1978, briefly forming a rock band named Migros, and became artistic collaborators a year later. They would produce a number of works until the death of Weiss in 2012.
As mentioned earlier, perhaps their most famous work is the short film Der Lauf der Dinge [The Way Things Go] : this can be seen here.
From Collection Pictet : Fischili/Weiss “have used objects and motifs filling our everyday lives so as to assemble them in constructions in which the derisory vies with the poetic: food, pillows, kitchen utensils, flowers or airports are transformed into subjects of wondrous exploration for the two Zurich-based artists. Their half-serious, half-amused gaze shines a particular light, between a delicate halo and sober neutrality, on this banality.
Films, photographs and sculptures convey the post-Dadaist spirit of the artists, who transform the dynamic of the commonplace into a mainspring of wonder and reveal the aesthetic qualities of things which, at first sight, seemed to lack them. The ordinary and insignificant nourish the creation of visual, protean fictions, whose pleasant triviality is tinged with the absurd. Fischli and Weiss reveal to us a part of a visible world which seems to have disappeared from our focus of attention. Mischievously and with an innocent air, they point out to us just how everyday elements are a source of potential delight.”
Fischli/Weiss would be Switzerland’s representatives at the Venice Biennale on several occasion : in 2003 they were awarded the Golden Lion prize for their work Questions (a shot video of that work can be seen here). Three years later they were recognized with the Roswitha Haftmann Prize in their native Switzerland.
Important exhibitions of the works of Fischli/Weiss include Fischli/Weiss: Snowman (Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 2017); Visible World (Fondation LUMA Arles, Arles, 2017); Is Seven a Lot? (Art Projects Ibiza, Ibiza, 2017); Fischli and Weiss: Der Lauf Der Dinge (The Way Things Go) (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2017); The Way Things Go / Der Lauf Der Dinge (Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Málaga, 2017); Peter Fischli David Weiss: How to Work Better (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2016 – a brief video overview of that show can be seen here); and Small Questions Big Questions (Benaki Museum, Athens, 2015).
Their collaboration lasted an impressive 33 years : In 2016, the Guggenheim Museum in New York presented the first large survey of their work. Fischli continues to live and work in Zürich, Switzerland. Today, their art is held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Hamburger Banhof in Berlin.
Much more about their art and ideas can be seen here.