Peter Fischli and David Weiss

Peter Fischli (b. 1952) and David Weiss (1946–2012) began their 33-year collaboration in 1979. Resisting any specific style, medium, or material, their work explores the poetics of banality—the sublimity of the objects and events constituting everyday life. Indebted to Dada, Surrealism, Pop Art, and Conceptual Art, their photographs, videos, slide projections, films, books, sculptures, and multimedia installations rely on keen observation and uncanny wit. Solo exhibitions of their work have been organized by the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1992); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1996); Museu d’art contemporani de Barcelona (2000); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2003–04); and Tate Modern, London (2006–07), among others. In 1995 they represented Switzerland in the Venice Biennale, presenting their 96-hour video installation Untitled (Venice Work) (1995); in 2003 they returned to Venice with their multiple slide installation Questions (2000-2003), for which they received the Leone d’Oro award.David Weiss (left) and Peter Fischli (right) in their Zürich studio, ca. 1987Photo courtesy the Fischli Weiss Archive, Zürich