Fischli and Weiss

Peter Fischli (born 1952) and David Weiss (1946 to 2012) were a celebrated Swiss artistic duo based in Zurich whose collaborative practice spanned over three decades and encompassed sculpture, film, photography, and installation. Their work is renowned for its playful yet philosophically rich engagement with everyday life, mundane objects, and the nature of existence itself. They met in 1979 and quickly developed a shared sensibility rooted in humor, curiosity, and a deep skepticism toward grand artistic gestures, preferring instead to find meaning in the ordinary and overlooked corners of the world. Among their most iconic works is 'The Way Things Go' (Der Lauf der Dinge, 1987), a 30-minute film documenting an elaborate chain reaction involving everyday materials such as tires, foam, and chemicals, which became one of the most celebrated works in contemporary art for its wit and conceptual ingenuity. Their sculptural series of polyurethane objects, meticulously crafted to resemble mundane items like stacked fast food, tools, and household goods, challenged notions of value and authenticity in art. Their slide installation 'Visible World' (1987 to 2000) presented thousands of amateur-style photographs of landscapes and cityscapes from around the globe, reflecting on photography, travel, and the human desire to document experience. Fischli and Weiss represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale in 1995 and received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2003, cementing their international stature. Their work has been exhibited at major institutions including the Tate Modern in London, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. They are considered central figures in the trajectory of Conceptual and Post-Conceptual art, influencing generations of artists with their refusal to separate the comic from the profound and their insistence that art could emerge from the most unassuming aspects of daily life.