INFERNO

Peter Fischli David Weiss: How to Work Better / Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, / February 5–April 20, 2016.

First Comprehensive Survey Spans 33 Years of Collaboration by the Swiss Artists through More Than 300 Works of Installation, Photography, Sculpture, and Video.

From February 5 to April 20, 2016, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents Peter Fischli David Weiss: How to Work Better, the first comprehensive survey in a New York museum of the remarkable 33-year artistic partnership between Peter Fischli (b. 1952) and David Weiss (1946–2012). Gathering more than three hundred sculptures, photographs, slide projections, and videos, the presentation encapsulates and culminates the dynamic collaboration between the Swiss artists, bringing into focus the generative and incisive dialogue they sustained over the course of their joint career.

Through its simultaneously witty and profound appropriation of cultural genres—from low-budget Hollywood flicks and picture-postcard views to the art historical trope of the readymade and the kind of amateur philosophy found in self-help books—the work continues to probe our grasp of reality and offer a deceptively casual meditation on how we perceive everyday life. As contemporary alchemists, Fischli and Weiss transformed the ordinary into something decisively not.

Initially planned during David Weiss’s lifetime, Peter Fischli David Weiss: How to Work Better is organized by Nancy Spector, Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator and Deputy Director, and Nat Trotman, Curator, Performance and Media, in close collaboration with Peter Fischli.

Photo: Peter Fischli David Weiss, The Least Resistance, 1980–81, color video, transferred from Super 8 film, with sound, 29 min. Courtesy the artists © Peter Fischli and David Weiss