Peter Fischli (b. 1952) and David Weiss (1946 – 2012) were a Swiss artist duo. They met in 1978 and first collaborated in 1979 to produce a series of ten photographs, Wurstserie (sausage series), depicting small scenes constructed from various types of meat, sausage and everyday objects. The duo went on to produce work across a variety of media including unfired clay, carved and painted polyurethane, photography and video. They asked complicated questions about the high-minded art world with humour and worked with a childlike spirit of discovery to encourage viewers to reconsider their surroundings with a fresh perspective. They are arguably most well-known for their film The Way Things Go (1987) and their Rat and Bear altar ego characters. Fischli currently lives and works in Zürich; Weiss died on 27 April 2012.
The duo’s work has been the subject of large-scale surveys at numerous museums across Europe and North America, including Tate Modern in London, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Museo Jumex in Mexico City. Their work has been featured in Documenta, Skulptur Projekte Münster, and six Venice Biennales, where they represented Switzerland in 1995 and were awarded the Golden Lion in 2003 for their installation Questions (1981–2002).
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A rat and a bear walk into the art world… Here’s what goes down
