Wednesday, Sep. 28, 2016

07:00 PM
US/Central

Peter Fischli & David Weiss
The Way Things Go, 1987
Courtesy of Icarus Films

The Way Things Go - Inside a warehouse, Swiss artists Peter Fischli (b. 1952) and David Weiss (1946–2012) built an enormous, precarious structure 100 feet long made out of common household items: tea kettles, tires, old shoes, balloons, wooden ramps, etc. Then, with fire, water, gravity and chemistry, they created a spectacular chain reaction, a self-destructing performance of physical interactions, chemical reactions, and precisely crafted chaos worthy of Rube Goldberg or Alfred Hitchcock.

Fischli and Weiss have collaborated on kinetic installations since 1979. All of their work to date, whether in photography, film, drawing, or sculpture, has demonstrated a deep interest in the mechanisms that animate the universe of objects. They remove these things that surround us from their contexts in our daily lives, and then restructure their relationships to one another. The artists aim neither to glorify nor to alienate these common objects, but merely to create new references in which they might be considered.

Called "the merry pranksters of contemporary art" (The New York Times), Fischli and Weiss collaborated for 33 years, drawing worldwide notoriety and praise for taking on big questions with humble materials and a tongue-in-cheek manner.