Matthew Marks Gallery

Peter Fischli David Weiss

For more than thirty years Peter Fischli and David Weiss collaborated on a body of work that combines, rearranges, or otherwise manipulates the mundane into something new and unexpected. Executed in a variety of media, including unfired clay, carved and painted polyurethane, photography, and video, their work playfully ignores the distinction between art and everything else. The duo is perhaps best known for their 1987 film The Way Things Go, in which a Rube Goldberg-like chain of events starring household objects and detritus unfolds in their studio, transforming these humble materials into something remarkable.

In their first collaborative work, Wursterie (Sausage Series, 1979), Fischli and Weiss transformed a bathroom shelf into a runway for fashionably attired sausages, and an unmade bed into an Alpine landscape. For Polyurethane Objects, begun in 1982, they used the same material Hollywood propmakers do to make meticulously carved and painted replicas of ordinary objects (a paint roller, a bottle of bleach, a few stray M&Ms, a cardboard box). Visible World (1986–2012) is a quasi-encyclopedic view of natural and built landscapes, from the commonplace to the extraordinary, made up of thousands of photographs made around the world by Fischli and Weiss over twenty-five years of travel.

The work of Peter Fischli (b. 1952) and David Weiss (1946–2012) has been the subject of large-scale surveys at numerous museums across Europe and North America, most recently in 2016 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Museo Jumex in Mexico City. Their work has been featured in Documenta, Skulptur Projekte Münster, and six Venice Biennales, where they represented Switzerland in 1995 and were awarded the Golden Lion in 2003 for their installation Questions (1981–2002). Peter Fischli lives and works in Zurich.

Selected Works

Exhibitions

DAVID WEISS
Drawings

February 9–April 6, 2019

523 West 24th Street
New York

PETER FISCHLI DAVID WEISS
Polyurethane Objects

January 18–April 12, 2014

1062 North Orange Grove
7818 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles

PETER FISCHLI DAVID WEISS
Clay and Rubber

October 29, 2009–January 16, 2010

523 West 24th Street
New York

PETER FISCHLI DAVID WEISS
Sun, Moon and Stars

October 29, 2009–January 16, 2010

522 West 22nd Street
New York

PETER FISCHLI DAVID WEISS
Sleeping Puppets

October 29, 2009–January 16, 2010

526 West 22nd Street
New York

PETER FISCHLI DAVID WEISS
Equilibres

April 27–June 30, 2007

523 West 24th Street
New York

PETER FISCHLI DAVID WEISS
Rat and Bear, Fotografias

March 11–April 22, 2006

526 West 22nd Street
523 West 24th Street
New York

PETER FISCHLI DAVID WEISS
Hunde (Dogs)

November 8–December 6, 2003

529 West 21st Street
New York

PETER FISCHLI DAVID WEISS

February 22–April 20, 2002

522 West 22nd Street
New York

PETER FISCHLI DAVID WEISS
Büsi (Kitty)

April 21–May 19, 2001

523 West 24th Street
New York

PETER FISCHLI DAVID WEISS

February 6–March 20, 1999

522 West 22nd Street
New York

Group Exhibitions

HOME LIFE

January 29–March 27, 2021

523 West 24th Street
New York

TRISHA DONNELLY, VINCENT FECTEAU, PETER FISCHLI DAVID WEISS, NAN GOLDIN, MARTIN HONERT, MICHEL MAJERUS, PAUL SIETSEMA, REBECCA WARREN

September 8–October 21, 2017

522 West 22nd Street
526 West 22nd Street
New York

SUMMER GROUP EXHIBITION

July 19–August 16, 2014

1062 North Orange Grove
7818 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles

PETER FISCHLI DAVID WEISS, KATHARINA FRITSCH, MARTIN HONERT, GARY HUME

July 10–August 14, 2014

523 West 24th Street
New York

SMALL SCULPTURE

September 23–October 28, 2006

523 West 24th Street
New York

SCULPTURE
Darren Almond, Peter Fischli David Weiss, Katharina Fritsch, Robert Gober, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Ugo Rondinone, Tony Smith

September 20–November 1, 2003

522 West 22nd Street
New York

SOMETHING ANYTHING
An exhibition curated by Nayland Blake

July 2–August 16, 2002

522 West 22nd Street
New York

100 DRAWINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHS
Tenth Anniversary Exhibition

November 3–December 22, 2001

523 West 24th Street
New York

WILLEM DE KOONING, PETER FISCHLI DAVID WEISS, LUCIAN FREUD, KATHARINA FRITSCH, RONI HORN, ELLSWORTH KELLY, BRICE MARDEN

September 25–November 27, 1999

522 West 22nd Street
New York

MAVERICK
Jean-Marc Bustamante, Peter Fischli David Weiss, Katharina Fritsch, Roni Horn, Thomas Schütte, Andreas Slominski

February 7–April 11, 1998

522 West 22nd Street
New York

Books

PETER FISCHLI DAVID WEISS
How To Work Better

PETER FISCHLI DAVID WEISS
Polyurethane Objects

PETER FISCHLI DAVID WEISS
Visible World

100 DRAWINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHS
Tenth Anniversary Exhibition

Posters

PETER FISCHLI DAVID WEISS

out of print

SOMETHING ANYTHING
An Exhibition Curated by Nayland Blake

MAVERICK
Jean-Marc Bustamante, Peter Fischli David Weiss, Katharina Fritsch, Roni Horn, Thomas Schutte, Andreas Slominski

out of print

Editions

PETER FISCHLI DAVID WEISS
Equilibres