Cookie Consent by Free Privacy Policy website 'Peter Fischli David Weiss: How to Work Better' a retrospective to date of their joint production
january 20, 2016 - Solomon Guggenheim NY

'Peter Fischli David Weiss: How to Work Better' a retrospective to date of their joint production

For more than three decades, #peterfischli (b. 1952) and #davidweiss (1946–2012) collaborated to create a unique oeuvre that brilliantly exploits humor, banality, and a keen rethinking of the readymade to realign our view of the world. #peterfischli #davidweiss: #howtoworkbetter offers the most thorough investigation to date of their joint production, revealing the ways they juxtaposed the spectacular and the ordinary in order to celebrate the sheer triviality of everyday life, while creating an open-ended interrogation of temporality, visual culture, and the nature of existence itself. The retrospective will demonstrate the intricate interrelationships among Fischli and Weiss’s seemingly discrete works in sculpture, photography, installation, and video, each of which they used to confront, examine, and lampoon the seriousness of high art. In particular it will establish a sustained dialogue between Fischli and Weiss’s work with the moving image and their sculptural practice, with signature projects like Suddenly This Overview (1981– ), hundreds of unfired clay sculptures that pillory established truths and myths alike, and The Way Things Go (1987), an inane filmic study of causational activity, appearing along the museum’s ramps. The exhibition will further consider Fischli and Weiss’s extended meditations on the banality of existence, with key objects from virtually every body of work within their oeuvre, including Sausage Series (1979); Equilibres (Quiet Afternoon) (1984–86); Grey Sculptures (1984–86/2006–08); Rubber Sculptures (1986–90/2005–06); Visible World (1986–2012); Airports (1987–2012); Polyurethane Installations (1991– ); Question Projections (2000–2003); Fotografías (2005); and Walls, Corners, Tubes (2009–12), among others.
Initially planned during David Weiss’s lifetime, #peterfischli #davidweiss: #howtoworkbetter is organized by Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator, and Nat Trotman, Curator, Performance and Media, in close collaboration with #peterfischli.
To coincide with this exhibition, two public works by Fischli and Weiss will appear on the streets of #newyork. From February 5 to May 1, Public Art Fund presents the text-based monument to labor #howtoworkbetter (1991) as a wall mural at the corner of Houston and Mott Streets. At 11:57 pm nightly throughout February, the video Büsi (Kitty) (2001) will appear in Times Square as part of Times Square Arts’ Midnight Moment program.
Major support for the exhibition has been provided by Laurenz Foundation, Schaulager, Basel.
The Leadership Committee for #peterfischli #davidweiss: #howtoworkbetter is gratefully acknowledged for its support, with special thanks to Chairs Maja Oeri and Hans Bodenmann. Additional support is provided by Matthew Marks; Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers; Galerie Eva Presenhuber; Glenstone; Collection Ringier; Alfred Richterich; Per Skarstedt; Walter A. Bechtler Foundation, Switzerland; Thomas Ammann Fine Art AG, Zürich; Ulla Dreyfus-Best; Hauser & Wirth; Gigi and Andrea Kracht; Arend and Brigitte Oetker; and Sylvie Winckler.
Funding is also generously provided by ART MENTOR FOUNDATION LUCERNE, National Endowment for the Arts, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, and #newyork State Council on the Arts.
 
Peter Fischli #davidweiss, Untitled, 1994–2013 (detail). Painted polyurethane, 164 parts, overall dimensions variable. Solomon R. #guggenheim Museum, #newyork, Purchased with funds contributed by the Collections Council and through prior gifts of an anonymous donor, Mr. and Mrs. Nathan L. Halpern, and the Andrew Powie Fuller and Geraldine Spreckels Fuller Bequest 2014.115 © #peterfischli #davidweiss. Photo: Jason Klimatsas, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery
Peter Fischli #davidweiss: How to Work Better
February 5–April 27, 2016
www.guggenheim.org