Peter Fischli / David Weiss. ¿Son los animales personas?

Image of the installation by Fiscli & Weiss ©Peter Fischli & David Weiss. Courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber (Zurich), Spruth Magers(Berlin/London) and Mathew Marks Gallery (New York).

Peter Fischli / David Weiss. ¿Son los animales personas?
30 de abril – 31 de agosto de 2009

( Source: ArtDaily) MADRID.- Are Animals People?, the exhibition by Peter Fischli (Zürich, 1952) and David Weiss (Zürich, 1946) organised by Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, focuses on a selection of works featuring Bear and Rat. Iconic avatars from some of their earliest works, this duo has made a comeback in recent works.

Played by the artists themselves, Bear and Rat stand in as projections of their roles in their own artistic practice. Through this distancing device, Fischli/Weiss ironically manifest an idea of art as an alternative system of knowledge that creates manifold ties between reality and fiction; these roles also embody the conversational style undergirding their collaborative work. The exhibition at the museum’s main facility comprises films from this ongoing saga, and related works. Functioning like a kind of museum devoted to Bear and Rat, it is presided over by vitrines containing the costumes used to play the characters. The Palacio de Cristal, the museum’s site in the Retiro Park, contains their latest work based on the two animals. The presentation of this series offers an excellent chance to acquaint ourselves with the artists’ creative universe.
Peter Fischli and David Weiss have been working together since 1979. Their earliest collaboration, executed immediately prior to the first film featuring Bear and Rat, consisted of a series of photos, their Wurstserie (Sausage series), portraying everyday scenes made from sausages and other ordinary objects. Using everyday materials to counter the solemnity and weight of traditional art genres it proposed an “amateurish” aesthetic closer to children’s handcrafts, and so brought into play many different aspects that would prove central to their later work.
In their sculptures, installations, photographs and films, Fischli/Weiss couple an exploration of their immediate surrounding environment with a signature deadpan wit, in order to generate far-reaching reflections, which uncover the pettiness subsumed in theoretically sublime concerns. In this fashion, they implement a systematic dehierarchisation that posits new subjective orders and classifications in what surrounds us. In their films, the artists acknowledge certain similarities with educational cinema, yet, by contrast, their works offer no explanations. In fact, far from analyzing, they show their contents with a laconic directness. They also frequently put the spectator in an uncomfortable predicament, sometimes by dint of the disproportionate quantity of stimuli included and other times because of the ambiguous or striking character of what is shown.

Fischli / Weiss Fotomontaje de Oso y Rata en el Palacio de Cristal del Parque del Retiro.
2009 Fecha: 30 de abril – 31 de agosto de 2009 Lugar: Palacio de Cristal, Parque del Retiro) y Edificio Sabatini. (Planta 4, Zona D) Organización: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Coordinación: Soledad Liaño

La exposición de Peter Fischli (Zurich, 1952) y David Weiss (Zurich, 1946) organizada por el Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, se realiza a partir de una selección de piezas hecha por los propios artistas y se centra en los protagonistas de sus primeras obras, Oso y Rata. Estos personajes, presentes en diferentes momentos de la trayectoria artística de Fischli y Weiss, les han servido para cuestionar el arte como sistema alternativo de conocimiento y posicionarse sobre la fina línea entre ficción y realidad, con distancia e ironía.

Los artistas trabajan con diversas técnicas en la construcción de lo banal, los objetos y lugares comunes, así como la percepción del tiempo. Para ello se sirven del humor, el absurdo, la distancia y el ingenio como herramientas. El distanciamiento del que parten les permite mayor reflexión sobre temas triviales y aparentemente sin trascendencia, mientras que con el humor se acercan a aquellos temas de carácter más sublime.

La obra habla de la transformación del lugar común, de la revisión de la realidad cotidiana y de la banalidad, para lo cual los artistas se valen de la investigación y observación del propio entorno propiciando una inversión de valores y jerarquías frente a la realidad. Si bien las obras no tienen una moraleja explícita, presentan y evidencian situaciones algunas veces a través de muchos estímulos y otras sugiriendo equívocos que propician la reflexión del espectador. Peter Fischli and David Weiss Present Are Animals People? at Reina Sofia Museum