Peter Fischli David Weiss: How to Work Better
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 demonstrates
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 establish esa 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 further considers 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,
Peter Fischli David Weiss: How to Work Better 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 Peter Fischli.To coincide with this exhibition, two public works
by Fischli and Weiss will appear on the streets of
New York. From February 5 to May 1, Public Art
Fund presents the text-based monument to labor
How to Work Better (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.Photography: David Heald © Solomon R.
Guggenheim Foundation© 2015 The Museum
of Modern Art, New York. Photography: Thomas
Griesel