World Classroom
Group Exhibition
Mori Museum, Tokyo
April 19–September 24, 2023

Since the 1990s, when the development of contemporary art began to be considered from multiple perspectives in different parts of the world, we have been seeing that contemporary art today goes far beyond the framework of arts and crafts and fine art in the school classroom. It is a composite field with connections to all subjects, including language and literature, arithmetic, science, and social studies. In each of these disciplines, researchers are exploring the “unknowns” of the world, delving into history, and making new discoveries and inventions from the past to the future in order to enrich our perception of the world. The stance adopted by contemporary artists that seeks to go beyond our preconceptions in a creative way is also connected to this exploration of these unknowns. In this sense, the contemporary art museum is something akin to a “classroom of the world” where we can encounter and learn about these unknown worlds.
World Classroom: Contemporary Art through School Subjects, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Mori Art Museum, is an attempt for us to encounter a world we have never seen or known from a wide variety of perspectives, using the subjects we learn at school as a gateway to contemporary art. Even though this exhibition is divided into sections such as “Language and Literature,” “Social Studies,” “Philosophy,” “Arithmetic,” “Science,” “Music,” and “P. E.,” each work, in fact, crosses over multiple subjects and domains. While over half the exhibited works will be drawn from the Mori Art Museum Collection for the first time ever, there will also be newly-commissioned artworks for this exhibition – altogether creating a “classroom of the world,” place of learning with works by some 50 artists/artist groups.

Peter Fischli  David Weiss
Should I paint a pirate ship on my car with an armed figure on it holding a decapitated head by the hair?
January 17–June 19, 2020
London

Should I paint a pirate ship on my car with an armed figure on it holding a decapitated head by the hair? is the fifth exhibition by Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss at their London gallery. This exhibition will present a concise overview of the artists’ extraordinary transformations of the commonplace in the form of three seminal works from throughout their collaborative career.

Peter Fischli  David Weiss
HAUS
April 27–August 10, 2019
Berlin

HAUS is a solo exhibition by Fischli Weiss, the Swiss artist duo known since the 1980s for their films including Der geringste Widerstand (The Least Resistance) and ambiguous sculptural everyday objects.

At the core of this new exhibition is Haus (House), a work Peter Fischli and David Weiss first developed for Skulptur Projekte Münster in 1987 and subsequently showed in exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum, New York and Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2016). This exhibition focuses on the architectural reference system at the heart of the artists’ work with a selection of sculptures and archival material.

Peter Fischli  David Weiss
Eine Ansammlung von Gegenständen
May 2–August 30, 2014
Berlin

The making of polyurethane objects has played a central role in the work of Peter Fischli and David Weiss for over 30 years. The objects themselves often depict utilitarian devices, tools or other everyday paraphernalia, all handcrafted and painted to be almost indistinguishable from the original. Boris Groys wrote that the practice of making the objects revives "the ethos of the artist as a working, creating craftsperson who once again represents the things of reality." Yet the exhibition of the polyurethane objects as artworks, carefully presented as if they were just mundane things, introduces layers of paradox, irony and humour.

Peter Fischli  David Weiss
March 2–April 13, 2013
Berlin

This solo presentation of work by Peter Fischli and David Weiss will display a cross-fading installation of photographs showing views of airports. Beside this work, four sculptures are on view. The artists' focus of artistic investigation is the unspectacular aspects of domestic life, employing a wide variety of creative means of expression, ranging from film, photography and artists’ books, to sculptures and multimedia installations. The artists adapt everyday objects and situations which they place – not without humour or irony – in an artistic context, thus raising philosophical and theoretical questions regarding the explanation of the world.

Peter Fischli  David Weiss
Walls, Corners, Tubes
October 10–November 10, 2012
London

In Walls, Corners, Tubes, the artists present a series of objects with geometrical bodies which have the form of walls, corners, and tubes and are made alternately of black rubber and unfired clay. Both the shapes of the objects and their titles such as Wand aus Ton ('Wall of Clay,' 2012) or Röhre aus Gummi ('Tube of Rubber,' 2012) recall functional elements, such as those often found at building supplies stores. Placed on high, white pedestals, the sculptures appear in various scales which distance them from their origin in the observed forms of reality. On the one hand, their dimensions are oriented towards the human body, so that they automatically relate to it like tools or items for everyday use. On the other hand, they become sculptures which, on a reduced scale, demonstrate an affinity to the objecthood of the Minimal Art of the 1960s.

Peter Fischli  David Weiss
Objects on pedestals
January 29–March 28, 2009
London

Sprüth Magers London is delighted to present Objects on Pedestals, a survey of sculpture works by acclaimed Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss. The exhibition includes a selection from the series Rubber Sculptures (1986–1988), which comprises a number of life-size black rubber casts of ordinary and commonplace objects, including a chest of drawers, a table, a candle and a cutlery tray. The exhibition also features a number of sculptures, all made in 2007 in unfired clay, which also depict normal and quotidian objects, such as a shoe or a jug, although on an exaggerated scale. Together, these two bodies of work reveal the artists’ ongoing fascination with the banal and absurd qualities of the everyday, and the materiality and tactility of mass consumption.

Peter Fischli  David Weiss
Sonne, Mond und Sterne
November 27, 2008–January 31, 2009
Berlin

Sonne, Mond und Sterne is a gallery-scale presentation of a project which originated in book form as a commission by the Swiss media conglomerate Ringier AG, to customise their annual report and turn it into a work of art.

The 2007 Ringier annual report consists of 40 pages of business data, and 800 pages of adverts. The adverts have been carefully selected and scanned by the artists from hundreds of newspapers and magazines that could be found at any newsstand in any part of the globalised marketplace. The adverts cover the whole spectrum of the lifestyle of the contemporary consumer, ranging from sport to travel and from fashion to family life. The adverts are carefully grouped and each image is positioned opposite a purposefully chosen companion image, so that each double-page spread forms a kind of diptych, revealing through association or juxtaposition an aspect of our mass culture of consumption.

Peter Fischli  David Weiss
Equilibres
May 15–July 28, 2007
Munich

The photographs Equilibres were created in the years 1984 and 1986. It is a series of 82 black-and-white and colour photographs showing assemblages of everyday objects. The attention is drawn to a dizzying construction, with gravity seemingly working in reverse, creating a state of suspension which cancels the weight and the value of the individual components. This is also summarized in the subheading of the Equilibres of Peter Fischli and David Weiss: „Am schönsten ist das Gleichgewicht, kurz bevor’s zusammenbricht.“ („Balance is most beautiful just before it collapses.“)

Mondi Possibili
Richard Artschwager, Benjamin Bergmann, Thomas Demand, Thea Djordjadze, Peter Fischli  David Weiss, Claus Föttinger, Thomas Grünfeld, Stefan Kern, Frances Scholz, Andreas Schulze, Franz West, Martin Wöhrl
January 15–March 17, 2007
Cologne

Peter Fischli  David Weiss
Fotografias
November 2, 2005–January 5, 2006
Cologne

Peter Fischli  David Weiss
Unsettled Work
October 10–November 29, 2003
London

Group show
John Baldessari, Cindy Bernard, Peter Fischli  David Weiss, Hirsch Perlman
March 8–April 6, 1991
Cologne

Mondi Possibili
John Armleder, Barbara Bloom, Tony Cragg, Peter Fischli  David Weiss, Katharina Fritsch, Louise Lawler, Allan Mccollum, Reinhard Mucha, Andreas Schulze, Haim Steinbach, Rosemarie Trockel, Mayer Vaisman, Jean-Luc Vilmouth, Bill Woodrow
September 8–September 30, 1989
Cologne

Peter Fischli  David Weiss
Skulpturen und Fotografie
May 19–June 24, 1989
Cologne

Das Licht von der anderen Seite – Teil II Fotografie
John Baldessari, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Anna & Bernhard Blume, Victor Burgin, Walter Dahn, Jimmy De Sana, Barbara Ess, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Peter Fischli  David Weiss, Hamish Fulton, Günther Förg, Georg Herold, Martin Kippenberger, Imi Knoebel, Thomas Locher, Allan Mccollum, Sigmar Polke, Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall, James Welling, Richard Wentworth
September 16–October 29, 1988
Cologne

Peter Fischli  David Weiss
Stiller Nachmittag
February 3–March 16, 1985
Cologne

Peter Fischli  David Weiss
Fieber
May 12–June 30, 1983
Cologne