David Weiss: Works, 1968-1979 @ Swiss Institute, New York

David Weiss: Works, 1968-1979

Swiss Institute, New York

December 11, 2014 - February 22, 2015

DAVID WEISS (1946-2012) was world-renowned for his sculptural, photographic and video work, made as Fischli/Weiss in collaboration with Peter Fischli beginning in 1979. This exhibition focuses on the lesser-known solo career of David Weiss, made prior to his ongoing collaboration, and is comprised of an exceptional group of works on paper from 1968-1979, previously exhibited at the Bündner Kunstmuseum in Chur, Switzerland in Spring 2014. David Weiss: Works, 1968-1979 at Swiss Institute also includes additional, never-before-seen material from the artist’s archive that provides unprecedented insight into his formative years.

Though set aside and virtually unknown to the public for over 30 years, in the months before his death in 2012, David Weiss began to organize his notebooks, sketchbooks, and early works on paper, culminating in this exhibition and the posthumous publication of Nine Books 1973-1979 by Edition Patrick Frey. David Weiss wrote: “At first we were part of a small Bohemian scene. In 1968 we suddenly were part of a movement that included larger groups of society. I felt I was part of it, I became committed, I read a great deal, stayed awake and wanted to see life.” His embrace of the rapid political and cultural shifts observed both in Zürich and through his extensive travels to the United States is reflected back in the incisive references and trenchant aesthetic of the exhibition.

The rarely seen works gathered at Swiss Institute conjure up cartoonish imagery, abstract compositions and cinematic cityscapes, signaling some of the subsequent artistic innovations of Fischli/Weiss’s celebrated oeuvre, which will be shown in a major retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Spring 2016. A unique occasion to explore the genesis of the prolific and irreverent vocabulary of one of contemporary art’s most influential figures, this exhibition further presents key elements of an artistic legacy that appear as fresh today as they did when first exhibited.

SWISS INSTITUTE 

18 Wooster Street, New York, NY 10013

www.swissinstitute.net

Video Art Exhibition – Istanbul Modern

Nothing Lasts Forever

Video Art Exhibition

ISTANBUL MODERN

Feburary 1 - May 12, 2006

Nothing Lasts Forever, the 3rd Video Programme at Istanbul Modern presents a selectiorı of significant works by Hussein Chalayan (Turkey), Fischli & Weiss (Switzerland) and Sam Taylor-Wood (Great Britain). These art works are relevant examples of how photography, cinema and video are inexcusable seed-beds for shaping our contemporary iconosphere. Such media have forged their artistic identity reworking representational techniques derived from previous creative traditions. Pictorial composition, theatrical stage sets and the fabling function of the novel are thus updated and transformed to shape our new visual and narrative models. Placing the accent on time and duration, the selected video works heighten out awareness of the fleetingness of time and the lack of eternal truths. They also evince the disappearance of boundaries between artistic disciplines such as painting, sculpture and fashion, and prove how art is able to embody the interactions between different fields of knowledge. 

HUSSEIN CHALAYAN

Hussein Chalayan (Cyprus, b. 1970) links fashion and performance to explore the politics of beauty in relation to the conflicts of his time. 

"Aeroplane Dress" (1999) is a video in which a fashion model directs her gaze at the spectator while different elements of her white metallic dress open up as if she is about to depart creating a powerful image of travelling bodies. "Afterwords" (2000) refers to the painful situation of having to flee your home at a time of war and having to conceal your most treasured possessions; as the artist says, "I wanted to somehow turn a horrific situation into something more poetic." 

FISCHLI & WEISS

The Swiss duo, Peter Fischli (Zurich, b. 1952) and David Weiss, (Zurich, b. 1945), has been working together since 1979 in the field s of sculpture, installation, film and photography. Their work, which is humorous, emotional and deeply metaphysical, explores the relationships between order and chaos, the everyday and the sublime, arousing a feeling of fascination in the spectator, who is invited to discover "the small miracles in everyday life". 

"The Way Things Go" (1987) is a film on a 100-foot long kinetic structure with everyday objects such as old tires, bottles, ladders and even soapsuds that were joined together. When the sculpture was set in motion, a controlled and surprising chain of reactions started creating an amusing happening, The work plays with the laws of physics and chemistry, deals with inevitability and chance and discovers the cosmic magic of a universe in precarious circumstances. 

"Büsy (Kitty)" (2001) presents a cat drinking milk in a dish. The work is a proposal for us to slow down and see how nice it is to just contemplate everyday life. There is a moment of marvel and peace in the fact that nothing or almost nothing is happening and no one is explaining anything. 

SAM TAYLOR-WOOD

Born in London in 1967 and trained as a sculptor at Goldsmiths College, Sam Taylor-Wood asserts that photo and video were a natural development in her research. Her work relates to human vulnerability and contemporary ennui. Many of her pieces are like tableaux vivants where the camel a has a fixed viewpoint and things take place within a unique frame. 

'Still Life" (2001) presents a classic and iconic arrangement of fruit that recalls a painting by Caravaggio or Zurbaran. The pieces of fruit, filmed in time-lapse at very high speed. blossom with mould before putrefying completely and turning into dust in front of viewers' very eyes. This accelerated process reveals the beauty of decay and its surprising and astonishing vitality. 

A Little Death" (2002) is a living composition arranged to appear as a seventeenth-century painting. The body of a dead hare hangs from its leg nailed to the wall, its head resting on a table beside a rosy peach. As the body of the hare begins to rat the animal seems to come alive again thanks to the unremitting movement of the maggots suggesting that life steams out of death. This piece was shot over nine weeks and one of its most intriguing aspects -the resolutely unaffected peach- was in fact an unforeseen accident: an out-of-season fruit that remained whole amidst its surrounding putrefaction.

This video art exhibition was curated by Rosa Martínez

With the Contribution of Caylon - Credit Agricole Group