“Fischli & Weiss: The Way Things Go" at the Figge Art Museum -- August 9 through February 8.
Saturday, August 9, through Sunday, February 8
Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second Street, Davenport IA
With Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss known for their witty explorations of human nature, the duo's acclaimed 1987 video The Way Things Go will be screened in the Figge Art Museum's Lewis Gallery from August 9 through February 8, this playful spectacle revered for transforming destruction into art, and embracing absurdity and unpredictability as essential parts of life.
The 16 mm art film The Way Things Go documents a long causal chain assembled of everyday objects and industrial materials in the manner of a Rube Goldberg machine, though without the trope of accomplishing a relatively mundane task at the end. The installation was in Fischli and Weiss' Zürich warehouse studio, about 100 feet long, and incorporated materials such as tires, trash bags, ladders, soap, oil drums, old shoes, water, and gasoline. Fire and pyrotechnics were used as chemical triggers. The film is 29 minutes and 45 seconds long, and some of that time is spent waiting for something to burn, dissolve, or slowly slide down a ramp. Long processes with little visible change are skipped with a fade out/fade in, and the film is presented as a single sequence of events, although careful observation reveals the employment of more than two dozen film edits.
Fischli and Weiss' project evolved out of work the artists did on their earlier photography series, Quiet Afternoon, from 1984-1985. As the delicately unstable assemblages they constructed for the photos were prone to almost immediately collapse, they decided that they wanted to make use of this energy. The film may also have been inspired by the video work of fellow Swiss artist Roman Signer, as the artists likely saw his video work that was exhibited at the Kunsthaus Zürich in 1981. Signer's videos often document objects performing simple actions that are the result of physical phenomena. The movie was a public highlight of the documenta 8 exhibition in Kassel, Germany in the summer of 1987, and is on permanent exhibition in both the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the Museum Wiesbaden in Wiesbaden. It is also part of Centre Georges Pompidou's collection in Paris.
Fischli & Weiss: The Way Things Go will present the artists' 1987 video in the Lewis Gallery from August 9 through February 8, with regular museum hours 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesdays through Saturdays (10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursdays) and noon to 5 p.m. on Sundays. Museum admission is $8-14, and more information is available by calling (563)326-7804 and visiting FiggeArtMuseum.org.
