拍品 7

The collaboration of Zurich-born artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss began in the late 1970s with a series of color photographs known as Wursterie, or "sausage series," in which piles of meat--pork, beef, poulty, fish and game--are vivified in zany personifications. In one example from the series, Fashion Show, five sausages catwalk in front of a bathroom mirror, swathed in faux haute couture of bacon and ham, adorned with mustard-makeup on a parsley-laiden catwalk. This irreverent send-up set the tone for the duo's output; since then, Fischli and Weiss have produced art that is consistently playful, whimsical, mischevious and cheeky. The present collection of works, Kanalarbeiter (Sewer Workers), Kreze (Swiss Candle) and Napf (Dog Dish), are some of Fischli and Weiss's most celebrated ones, and demonstrate their wicked creativity with domestic objects of daily life. Their material of choice, industrial-quality black rubber, transforms each object from ordinary object of function to an entirely new entity. Both Pop and Anti-Pop, these works celebrate the quotidian but obstruct the complete appreciation of the familiar by robbing viewers of expected textures, colors and contexts. Rubber, as a material, evokes a multitude of responses, from a rather innocuous one (as in our relationship to ordinary functional rubber objects, such as tires) to playful--or even devious--ones (such as S&M fetish objects or a child's rubber toy). At the same time, though, their works are rich in intellectual rigor, as the artists consistently apply their own distinct approach to issues of gender, language, history and the panoply of art historical traditions. Duchamp's readymades and the surrealist's love of the uncanny object immediately come to mind, as do Jasper Johns' beer cans and Warhol's embrace of popular culture. Phenomenologically, each work in the series seems to beg of a participant in order to be completed. The Dog Dish sits empty, waiting to be filled and eaten from, and the Swiss Candle remains perpetually unlit, devoid of its original function as utilitarian light source. Even the Sewer Workers, shrunk to such a tiny scale, seems to invite a small child's play. As Rachel Haidu explains, "Fischli and Weiss produce a small 'museum' of familiar objects in a material that, while mundane, also unsettlingly evokes the realm of sadomasochistic erotics. ... Each object appears almost surrealistically, even fetishistically, individuated, as if the medium of black rubber had elicited the object's true nature. Each clammy, alien surface also delivers a surprisingly powerful invitation to touch; other sense responses--the taste of sweet licorice, the smell of incense or of tires permeated with gasoline--are also powerfully evoked. Like the real-life objects to which we grow attached, these works gain a character and aura all their own. (R. Haidu, "Peter Fishli and David Weiss," From Pop to Now, M. Sundell, ed., New York, 2002, p. 78).

PETER FISCHLI & DAVID WEISS (b. 1946 & b. 1952)

Kanalarbeiter (Sewer Workers)

細節

PETER FISCHLI & DAVID WEISS (b. 1946 & b. 1952)
Kanalarbeiter (Sewer Workers)
inscribed 'F/W' in blue crayon (on the underside)
cast rubber
6 7/8 x 18¼ x 10¼ in. (17.5 x 46.5 x 26 cm.)
Executed in 1986-1987. This work is number one from an edition of six.

來源

Galerie Monica Spruth, Cologne
Vera List, New York
The Estate of Vera List, Sotheby's New York, 13 November 2003, lot 142
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

出版

J. Silverthorne, "The Critic as Four-Eyed Peg Leg", Parkett, no. 17, 1988, p. 67 (illustrated).

展覽

Kunsthaus Zurich, Stiller Nachmittag: Aspekte Junger Schweizer Kunst, September-November 1987, p. 65 (illustrated; another from the edtition illustrated).
Lausanne, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Private View 1980-2000: Collection Pierre Huber, June-September 2005, p. 149 (illustrated).