I looked at fischli & weiss in more detail because I came across them again when reading about Peter Liversidge, and how he finds inspiration from their work.
I'm just gonna drop down some works I came across in my exploration that stood out to me..
Fischli and Weiss' THE RIGHT WAY
'Coming full circle, the final room in this retrospective focuses on some of Fischli / Weiss’s earliest collaborations. The Rat and Bear costumes were worn by the artists in the early 1980s for the two films in which they play struggling characters who plot, daydream, squabble and yearn for worldly success.
The first Rat and Bear film, The Least Resistance 1981 was set in urban Los Angeles, where the artists were living. The Right Way 1982–3, which is shown here, was their second appearance and shows the two characters rambling through a mountainous landscape, of the kind that filled nineteenth-century artists with thoughts of the sublime. A book called Order and Cleanliness 1981, setting out the ideas of Rat and Bear, is crammed with charts and diagrams, each attempting to impose a crazed order on the world.
Many of Fischli / Weiss’s characteristic themes are present in these early works. The ponderings of Rat and Bear represent philosophical inquiry pushed to absurdity, while works such as the Questions series emerged from writing the dialogue for the two characters. Similarly, Rat and Bear’s doomed attempts to categorise the world in sprawling diagrams can be seen as a precursor of encyclopaedic projects such as the photographic series Visible World. And of course, there is the deadpan, ironic wit that underpins almost all of their work.'
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Fischli and Weiss' THE POINT OF LEAST RESISTANCE
'Hundreds of questions, handwritten in four different languages, are projected onto the wall in playfully undulating patterns. Combining grandiose metaphysical speculation and the mundane problems of everyday life, Questions 2002–3 explores the point where the profound slips into the ridiculous. Fischli / Weiss have described them as questions that don’t demand a response but instead make you wonder what kind of person would ask such a thing. As one impossible question follows another, they begin to suggest the workings of an incoherent and restless mind. ‘In a certain way, it leads to a dissolution of the self if all of these things simply whirl about unanswered – a feverish, disoriented state that’s upsetting because it’s unstoppable’, Weiss has said. ‘We did in fact imagine a presence at the centre of this multitude of questions, and we made speculations about the person. Most likely it was a man who lets everything run through his head before falling asleep – thus the projection of questions in the dark.’
This installation was the culmination of a series of works composed of absurd questions, including a book called Will Happiness Find Me? The use of text is reminiscent of the conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s, in which the physical art object is less important than the ideas that it embodies. It also emphasises the philosophical character of Fischli / Weiss’s art, a willingness to question the world that doesn’t take itself too seriously.'
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https://www.deutscheboersephotographyfoundation.org/en/collect/artists/peter-fischli-david-weiss.php
“To be frank, there is nothing more superficial than pictures of flowers. Yet by the same token, there is nothing more beautiful than a garden in bloom.” Or so Zurich-based artistic tandem, Peter Fischli and David Weiss would have it. Their claim comes as a bit of a surprise in light of the fact that over the last few years they seem to have concerned themselves almost encyclopedically with flower motifs. And to be even more frank, there is nothing more trivial than double exposures – that first attempt by budding amateur photographers to be artistic. Serious artists simply do not do such things, or, if there is no way of avoiding it, then at least with Photoshop on-screen. Fischli/Weiss have to pass here, too. The color composition is all they have retouched in their photos – the double exposures are deliberate. “We were interested in the element of chance,” says Peter Fischli. And David Weiss continues: “When the photographs come off, it’s like receiving a gift.” After all, works of this kind are not at the artist’s fingertips. Like a garden that needs green thumbs, carefully tending, and, quite simply, luck. Not that the pictures have much to do with nature, given that they emphasize domestication.
Beauty and beastly banality, coincidence and manipulation, art and nature, provocation and decoration: these are the sets of poles between which the Fischli/Weiss flower pictures oscillate. “On the theoretical side, the photographs tread on rather thin ice,” admits Peter Fischli. And David Weiss affirms: “In fact, they tread quite a thin line: we want to seduce viewers with floral opulence. But you can’t exactly view them ingenuously, either.”
'This is the first UK retrospective to explore the collaborative art practice of Swiss artists Peter Fischli (born 1952) and David Weiss (born 1946).
Since the late 1970s the artists have consistently captivated and amused audiences with their extraordinary transformations of the commonplace. Fischli and Weiss work across a wide range of media and this exhibition presents their sculpture, installation, moving image and photography. Underlying all of their work is a childlike spirit of discovery which encourages the viewer to look afresh at their surroundings. In Fischli and Weiss’s world everyday objects take on an unexpectedly lifelike quality; they balance on each other, play off each other and collide into one another with a witty intelligence infused by the artists.
Displayed works include a history of the world told through the medium of hand-modelled clay figures and a multiple slide projection installation which asks hundreds of big and small philosophical questions such as ‘Will happiness find me?’ Visitors also have the chance to see two outstanding films. The Right Way 1983, features the artists, dressed in rat and bear costumes, scaling Alpine slopes and crossing rivers as they seek the right way. In The Way Things Go 1987, a mesmerising array of household objects, including teapots, tyres, buckets and balloons, crash into one another in an absurd chain reaction powered by home-made explosions and collisions.
This intriguing exhibition also presents the photographic series Quiet Afternoon 1984–5, which documents precariously balanced household utensils on the verge of collapse, and painstakingly hand-crafted polyurethane sculptures which simulate the myriad of everyday objects to be found in Fischli and Weiss’s studio.'
Peter Fischli and David Weiss
Image from Visible World 1987–2001
Series of 3,000 slides
'Visible World 1987–2000 presents an archive of nearly 3,000 photographs taken by the artists on various travels throughout the world. As Weiss says, the project provided a break from the studio: ‘we also needed some fresh air, to get away from this incessant tinkering about, to go out with a camera, looking for interesting things in a passive sense.’
While earlier works had used photographs only to document temporary sculptures, here the artists investigate the medium of photography in its own right. ‘During our first journey there was an intention to find pictures that already exist as such’, Fischli has said, and the series includes much-photographed views such as the New York skyline, Sydney Harbour and the Pyramids. Others are the kind of pictures taken by amateur photographers, conventionally composed, sharply focused, with appealing subject matter such as woodland glades and sunlit gardens. While the work shows the limitations of photography, how it presents only the superficial surface of the ‘visible world’, there is also a sense of awe and wonder. The arrangement of images is broadly chronological, with sequences of orangey sunsets or snow-capped mountains, punctuated by groups of famous world sites. Both the anonymous and the recognisable are given equal billing in this visual encyclopaedia of the world.
Visible World exists in a number of formats; as an artists’ book, as an installation of fifteen light tables displaying a vast slide archive and, presented here, as a three-monitor video installation in which pictures cross-fade from one to another.'
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/fischli-weiss/fischli-weiss-room-guide-room-1/fischli-weiss-8
'Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss built a massive body of work that questions and satirizes mundane elements of the human condition for more than 30 years until Weiss’s passing in 2012. Snowman (1990), one of the many snowman sculptures duo created over the years, is a striking example of their depiction of the irony embedded in everyday situations.'
Peter Fischli and David Weiss are consummate innovators. They have moved from medium to medium, deconstructing and rearranging materials and subject matter to create a unique body of work. Since the early 1980s, Fischli and Weiss have quietly revolutionized sculpture, video, and photography. Their aesthetic is dedicated to exploring the commonplace, finding the humor, beauty, and fragility therein.
In 1988, Fischli and Weiss began working on an ongoing series of airport photographs. At first glance, the images appear to be tourist snapshots. However, as critic Robert Fleck writes in the duo’s Phaidon monograph, “The images are so strictly constructed and so iconographically innovative…that they introduced a refreshing shock of oxygen into the closed atmosphere of art photography and into contemporary art as a whole, and have now acquired the status of contemporary icons.”
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'Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss built a massive body of work that questions and satirizes mundane elements of the human condition for more than 30 years until Weiss’s passing in 2012. Snowman (1990), one of the many snowman sculptures duo created over the years, is a striking example of their depiction of the irony embedded in everyday situations.'
Copyright Peter Fischli / David Weiss
Installation view, "Common Ground", 13th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice, 2012
'Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are delighted to present an exhibition of work by
Peter Fischli and David Weiss. The solo presentation will display a cross-fading installation
of photographs showing views of airports. Beside this work, four sculptures are on view.
Peter Fischli and David Weiss began collaborating in the mid 1970’s and have since
developed an influential position within contemporary art. The artistic duo have worked
closely with Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers for over three decades, presenting one
of their first solo exhibitions at Monika Sprüth Galerie in Cologne in 1983. Their focus of
artistic investigation is the unspectacular aspects of domestic life, employing a wide variety
of creative means of expression, ranging from film, photography and artists’ books, to
sculptures and multimedia installations. The artists adapt everyday objects and situations
which they place – not without humour or irony – in an artistic context, thus raising
philosophical and theoretical questions regarding the explanation of the world.
Since the nineteen-eighties, Peter Fischli and David Weiss have been photographing
cities, landscapes, and airports during their travels. The airports, which are the central
motif of this exhibition, may be seen in quite different ways. On the one hand, as an
autonomous and contemporary civilisation with coherent spatial organisation, an individual
set of actors and an aesthetic language of their own. Airports are a fundamental symbol of
economic globalization and networks, and they function as points of departure and
intersection for international trade. On the other hand, they are the source of yearnings
which leave their mark on people in their striving towards far-away and unknown places.
Airports move within an ambiguity between sameness and difference. Cultural and
geographical distinctions are apparent everywhere.
In this work of the artistic duo, in which hundreds of photographs of airports play the
leading role, the principle of fades and the use of slowly dissolving transitions convey an
impression of contemplative rapture with vivid meditative and evocative power. The four women in business costumes (1987/2012) made of white plaster show the nonindividual
and stereotypical appearance of a modern woman whose activity is not clearly
defined, as there are no details that allow an individual attribution. Likewise, the three
automobiles (1988/2013) are, like airplanes, an essential part of our world, but in the
selected aesthetic and form they only resemble prototypes. The sculptures can be read as
a steady effort and ongoing artistic experiment to give an impression of today's life and its
banality.'
Peter Fischli and David Weiss. The solo presentation will display a cross-fading installation
of photographs showing views of airports. Beside this work, four sculptures are on view.
Peter Fischli and David Weiss began collaborating in the mid 1970’s and have since
developed an influential position within contemporary art. The artistic duo have worked
closely with Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers for over three decades, presenting one
of their first solo exhibitions at Monika Sprüth Galerie in Cologne in 1983. Their focus of
artistic investigation is the unspectacular aspects of domestic life, employing a wide variety
of creative means of expression, ranging from film, photography and artists’ books, to
sculptures and multimedia installations. The artists adapt everyday objects and situations
which they place – not without humour or irony – in an artistic context, thus raising
philosophical and theoretical questions regarding the explanation of the world.
Since the nineteen-eighties, Peter Fischli and David Weiss have been photographing
cities, landscapes, and airports during their travels. The airports, which are the central
motif of this exhibition, may be seen in quite different ways. On the one hand, as an
autonomous and contemporary civilisation with coherent spatial organisation, an individual
set of actors and an aesthetic language of their own. Airports are a fundamental symbol of
economic globalization and networks, and they function as points of departure and
intersection for international trade. On the other hand, they are the source of yearnings
which leave their mark on people in their striving towards far-away and unknown places.
Airports move within an ambiguity between sameness and difference. Cultural and
geographical distinctions are apparent everywhere.
In this work of the artistic duo, in which hundreds of photographs of airports play the
leading role, the principle of fades and the use of slowly dissolving transitions convey an
impression of contemplative rapture with vivid meditative and evocative power. The four women in business costumes (1987/2012) made of white plaster show the nonindividual
and stereotypical appearance of a modern woman whose activity is not clearly
defined, as there are no details that allow an individual attribution. Likewise, the three
automobiles (1988/2013) are, like airplanes, an essential part of our world, but in the
selected aesthetic and form they only resemble prototypes. The sculptures can be read as
a steady effort and ongoing artistic experiment to give an impression of today's life and its
banality.'
Untitled (Airport), 2008
Panoramic five-color lithographic print, printed from aluminum plates on three identical sheets of Zerkall Büttenpaper (300 g)
Each: 51 1/4 × 33 in (130 × 84 cm); overall: 51 1/2 × 99 1/4 in (130 × 252 cm)
Panoramic five-color lithographic print, printed from aluminum plates on three identical sheets of Zerkall Büttenpaper (300 g)
Each: 51 1/4 × 33 in (130 × 84 cm); overall: 51 1/2 × 99 1/4 in (130 × 252 cm)
Peter Fischli and David Weiss are consummate innovators. They have moved from medium to medium, deconstructing and rearranging materials and subject matter to create a unique body of work. Since the early 1980s, Fischli and Weiss have quietly revolutionized sculpture, video, and photography. Their aesthetic is dedicated to exploring the commonplace, finding the humor, beauty, and fragility therein.
In 1988, Fischli and Weiss began working on an ongoing series of airport photographs. At first glance, the images appear to be tourist snapshots. However, as critic Robert Fleck writes in the duo’s Phaidon monograph, “The images are so strictly constructed and so iconographically innovative…that they introduced a refreshing shock of oxygen into the closed atmosphere of art photography and into contemporary art as a whole, and have now acquired the status of contemporary icons.”
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An Introduction to Peter Fischli David Weiss: How to Work Better