Swiss artist David Weiss of the duo Fischli/Weiss has passed away at age 65 at his home in Zurich. Weiss, who had been suffering from cancer since last September, was considered one of the world’s top contemporary artists.
This content was published on
1 minute
swissinfo.ch and agencies
The Matthew Marks gallery in New York, which represents the duo in the United States, confirmed his death on Friday. Weiss trained as a sculptor in Zurich and Basel.
Fischli and Weiss, who began collaborating in 1979, are best known for their 1987 experimental film, The Way Things Go (“Der Lauf der Dinge”).
It shows a chain reaction of objects in a warehouse, about 100 feet long, that includes a tire rolling down a series of ramps, a ladder being knocked down, a candle resting on wheels that light a fuse that leads to an explosion, and so on.
The film lasts nearly 30 minutes, much of it waiting for something to happen.
Besides films, the duo also produced huge photos, sculptures, art books and quirky video installations.
Much of their fame stemmed from their humour and the parody contained in their work. They were awarded the top prize at the Venice Biennale in 2003 for a video installation projecting more than a thousand apparently nonsense questions on a wall.
German publication “manager magazin” placed the duo this month in 26th position of its latest ranking of the world’s top 100 artists.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.
Read more
More
Swiss art gains international recognition
This content was published on
The next two weeks will see a string of auctions of Swiss art by major auction houses in Zurich: Sotheby’s (November 28), Christie’s (December 5) and Koller (December 9) are offering 500 works for tender. Auction sales of Swiss art have been taking place since the seventies, but for the past few years they have…
This content was published on
The show, put on in collaboration with London’s Tate Modern, is called “Questions & Flowers” and runs from June 6 to September 9. Organised with the artists’ support, “Questions & Flowers” boasts the most comprehensive overview to date of an oeuvre as varied as it is enigmatic. Fischli and Weiss have been collaborating since 1979…
This content was published on
The jury credited the video-artist duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss with presenting the best work at this year’s festival. The Zurich-based team were congratulated on “their modesty, clarity and artistic quality, for asking questions that help us to understand one another, and for having created a work that captures the true nature of dreams…
This content was published on
David Weiss was born in 1946 in Zurich and studied sculpture in Zurich and Basel. He was diagnosed with cancer last September. His partnership with Peter Fischli, who was six years younger, began in 1979. The pair achieved international recognition in 1987 with the film “The Way Things Go”. In the film, the camera follows…
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.