Peter Fischli / David Weiss 

(Zurich, 1952 / Zurich, 1946-2012)

The Swiss artists Peter Fischli (1952) and David Weiss (1946-2012) worked together for thirty-three years, creating a diverse oeuvre in which they celebrate the complex banality of our day-to-day reality. Their projects are the result of experiments with and manipulations of our everyday experiences, showing these in a new perspective in which sensitivity, curiosity and irreverent humour are intrinsic. Their works have been produced in different materials, including clay, polyurethane, photographs, books, slides and video, making no distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art.

Their first two projects laid the basis for their subsequent collaborations , with each project flowing into the next to create a natural linkage. In 1979 they began working together on Wurstseries (Sausage Series), composed of ten photographs of scenes of ordinary daily life recreated with pieces of sausage and other detritus. The scenes are dramatic in composition, and make use of what the artists had at hand in their studio, such as the bathroom shelf that serves as the catwalk of a fashion show in The Snobs (the fashion show) on which sausages pose, dressed in different types of salami. Their next collaboration was Der geringste Widerstand (The Least Resistance, 1981), a video shot in Los Angeles in the style of a road movie, in which the artists in their Rat and Panda costumes dialogue and debate philosophical questions, taking these to the point of absurdity.

Carolina Grau