PETER FISHLI & DAVID WEISS, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1999 [artist’s book]

PETER FISHLI & DAVID WEISS, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1999
27,5 x 21,5 cm
SC, 160 pp., offset, high gloss MC paper
original grey cardboard in the middle, sleeve
1st edition
published by Buchhandlung Walther Koenig, Cologne, Germany
mint condition, uncommon in this state
€ 280,- plus € 18,- registered mail

 

Peter Fischli: “We were interested in the element of chance”. David Weiss: “When the photographs come off, it’s like receiving a gift.”
and “In fact, they tread quite a thin line: we want to seduce viewers with floral opulence. But you can’t exactly view them ingenuously, either.”
This ‘book’ is one of the most outstanding visuals issued in the nineties as an industrially made artist’s book. The loose pages folded together as a book make each photographic double exposure on each spread an evocative experience for the eye. Soon one year later in 2000 a second edition was published due to its success.

PETER FISCHLI & DAVID WEISS, Making Things Go / The Way Things Go / Sketch, 2007

PETER FISCHLI & DAVID WEISS, Making Things Go / The Way Things Go / Sketch, 2007
3 DVD’s 71’27” / 1’52” / 29’57”
sleeves, cardboard box, embossed texts
edition 150, signed, numbered
mint
published by Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, Switzerland
not available anymore

Fischli and Weiss adapted objects and situations from everyday life and placed them in an artistic context—often using humour and irony. Wurstserie (1979) was Fischli and Weiss’s first collaborative project, setting the tone for their future work. In the series, ordinary sausages and slices of sausages became the protagonists of scenarios, alluding to situations such as cars in a traffic accident in an urban setting, layers of carpets and other situations. By the end of the 1980s, the duo had expanded their repertoire to embrace an iconography of the incidental, creating deadpan photographs of kitsch tourist attractions and airports around the world.

 

History of prices:
published by Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, Switzerland  €  6.100,- / US$ 7,900.- October 2012

FISCHLI & WEISS, Untitled (Mushroom), 2006

PETER FISCHLI and DAVID WEISS, Untitled (Mushroom), 2006
50 x 60 cm / 20 24 inches
photograph
edition 120
recto: signed, dated, numbered

Untitled (Mushroom) is taken from a series of photographs of ferns, fungi, flowers, insects, grasses and undergrowth. Each photograph is a double exposure, made by either Peter Fischli or David Weiss taking pictures and then handing the camera over to the other, or maybe not, rewinding the film, and shooting again on the same roll of film. The result is a kaleidoscopic world of double-vision. A kind of what they called “concentrated daydreaming”—real-time glimpses into daily life in Zurich: a mountain sunrise, a restaurant chef in his kitchen, sanitation workers, a bicycle race, and so here mushrooms in nature.

 

History of prices:
Counter Editions, London, England    €  2.500,- / GBP 2,000.- September 2012
Auctionata Inc., New York, USA € 1.916,- / US$ 2,400.- November 2014

FISCHLI and WEISS, Ohne Titel, 1998-1999

PETER FISHLI & DAVID WEISS, Ohne Titel, 1998-1999
60 x 86 cm (50 x 76 cm)
digital print
edition 200
signed, numbered
published by Texte zur Kunst, Berlin, Germany
€ 740,- plus € 32,- Track & Trace registered EU mail

 

Each photograph is a double exposure, made by either Peter Fischli or David Weiss taking pictures and then handing the camera over to the other, or perhaps not, rewinding the film, and shooting again on the same roll of film. The result is a kaleidoscopic world of double-vision
“We were interested in the element of chance,” says Peter Fischli, adding “On the theoretical side, the photographs tread on rather thin ice.” David Weiss affirms: “In fact, they tread quite a thin line: we want to seduce viewers with floral opulence. But you can’t exactly view them ingenuously, either.”

History of prices:
Moderne und Zeitgenössischer Graphik, Cologne, Germany 21 March 2020 € 500,- (hammer price, poor condition)
Grisebach, Berlin, Germany € 1.600,- 30 November 2019 (hammer price)
Koller Auction, Zurich, Switzerland SFr 1.000,- 9 December 2017 (hammer price)