In The Right Way (1987), one in a series of films co-directed by Peter Fischli and David Weiss, a rat — an ugly pest — and a bear — endangered and adorable — unite in adventures. They do so with a certain quality, let’s say. The impetus, it seems, is a simple sentiment of camaraderie, an analysis of being together. An elementary trust in friendship. The goodwill between the rat and the bear is meticulously examined, tested, dissected. Exposed to the unadulterated forces of nature and a multitude of extraordinary events, they are compelled to confront not solely external hindrances but also their inner demons. Armed with sincere intentions and abundant benevolence, they strive to decipher their environment and their experience. Occasionally they find themselves gravitating toward the enigmatic path of righteousness, almost instinctively. They could be making an exhibition. Or, rather, finding the right pretext. Which suffices, in the end.
It is undeniable that friendship played a pivotal role in Fischli’s trajectory, and that his sudden, distinct practice, after the death of David Weiss, was delineated within a complex circumspection. As Mark Godfrey astutely noted, this was not merely “an acrimonious rock band split.” This was a process of mourning and progression. Methodical, much like the core of the Fischli/Weiss oeuvre, this new phase demanded a return to essentials to unravel the past and distill its quintessence, often with irony, occasional gravity, yet always within an understanding of that very premise. Yet not a complete restart. Quite the opposite. Of a quality, again.
It’s 2017 in Los Angeles, at Gaga & Reena Spaulings LA, in a large space on 7th Street, in Westlake, in front of MacArthur Park. The city of lost but infinite dreams. A city where a taxi driver is also a second-rate actor, and where their story is true because everything is true in Hollywood. In which, in a 1981 debut film, a rat and a bear wander the sweltering, anti-pedestrian streets of the ghost city until they find themselves in a neutral, convenient, white cube gallery space. As Fischli returned to Los Angeles to prepare for this exhibition, “Can, Bags & Boxes,” in solitude, he found himself confronted with that precise scene from The Last Resistance (1980–81), in which the two protagonists, perspiring beneath their costumes, meandered among the works of an unknown artist. They contemplate colorful abstract sculptures, crudely fashioned from cardboard and thick paper, arranged on columns of varying heights. One of them gingerly picks up a sculpture, manipulating it with his hand, while the other observes: “Such harmony and balance.” “And well mounted, too. Excellent,” responds the other. These sculptures, originally crafted by Fischli and Weiss as set pieces for the film, emerged as spectral apparitions in Fischli’s first exhibition without Weiss. These peculiar objects, reminiscent of midcentury modernist sculptures, derived their significance not solely from memory, but from the return to that moment, that episode, that sweltering day in Los Angeles. A day amid the inferno of cars on the city’s sprawling highways, where the cumulative value of these objects lay in the contemplation of a puzzling familiarity. A collection of rearrangements and manipulations that boldly blurs the lines between the ordinary and the extraordinary; the artistic and the mundane; what has value and what does not. And everything makes sense, after all. To put it more subtly: “One could say: the better the prop, the closer we come to the real possibility of sculpture. And: the more convincing the sculpture, the more successful the little miracle of making an artist appear too.” The exhibition became the place of a film — this one, precisely — its stage, and its theater, Fischli taking on the role of the artist while conceptualizing works that stood out from those presented in the film. Pretending, or acting even. Returning to a biography.
This distinctiveness is an attitude. Pedestals are made of cardboard, testing the concept of what defines a pedestal. Just like the sculptures atop them. Boxes, bags, and cans: vessels. Objects of low status, and transitional. As Peter mentioned to me over the phone: not a thing on its own. Like bubble wrap. The sculptures dance opinionated atop their pedestals — too large, too high — reflecting their lofty ambition. Boxes and bags sway and flaunt themselves, adopting a playful demeanor. They return to a childlike stance, seizing upon all that comprises their immediate environment — a room, a kitchen, the contents of a bag, a drawer — to strip away its formal weight, transforming it into a point of irony. The work is imbued with mockery, contemplating the seriousness it both demands and produces. A mockery that is reflective, carefully weighing its merits and drawbacks, while considering and grasping its pretext. In the same exhibition, elements of newspaper articles are employed with distinct purpose. A copy of Neue Zürcher Zeitung from 1914, another from Neue Presse from 1968, and a final one from Migros-Magazin from 2017 — the year of the exhibition. Used in the manner of papier-mâché, they remain invisible, covered in paint, but nevertheless elementary materials of the sculptures. One might perceive a trilogy: the Dadaism of 1914, the revolution of 1968, and the exhibition of 2017. Ultimately, one could also believe in anything, for it seemed to signify nothing. Fischli had simply picked, at random, a stack of magazines from a space brimming with them, and had utilized them in the same manner in a performance that suggested nonchalance, naturalness, and randomness. It’s likely false, yet it remains the basis — the alibi of interpretation — for this discourse. And this works. Somehow, it all makes sense too that Fischli’s most important exhibition, as a viewer, was one he visited as a child in Bern, “Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form,” in 1969.
Sculptures tend to adopt a stance that mirrors that of an artist, or at least what Fischli seems to suggest: that one must arm oneself with patience; that gazing at the ceiling, and perhaps even drawing on it, is reasonable enough; that there’s an insistence on tearing paper into fragments only to meticulously piece them back together; that a deliberate counterproductivity is arguably the only acceptable form of insolence in the face of late capitalism — and particularly the kind entrenched within artistic production networks. This inertia, almost as a form of dandyism, claims the privilege of time: time, imposed as both free and open, that adamantly resists being allocated for anything beyond its indeterminate possibilities. A political assertion. A peculiar pleasure — this nonsensical, ceaseless pause — that ultimately leads to an exhaustion that the work itself evades.
Take, for instance, the installation featuring a series of counterfeit signal signs (“12 Arbeiten ohne Titel,” Galerie Buchholz, Cologne, 2023; “Ungestalten,” Gaga & Reena Spaulings LA, Los Angeles, 2023) that envelop the observer in a kind of manipulated map. Within this maze, the singular desire is to induce a collision, a deliberate crash of all these speeding cars or pedestrians. What is a car, or a pedestrian, after all? Some are coated with snow, their headlights casting shifting hues from white to yellow. White because of the light (one could say bright, luminous, or even shiny), and yellow because of the space in between: the gap at the crosswalk, when I’m wondering whether to hurry and cross or simply wait. It’s a kinetic longing, a cinematic play of being patient. Very patient. These are idle, aptly described by Tom Hodgkinson as individuals who unnerve governments: “They do not manufacture useless objects and they do not consume the useless products of labor. They cannot be monitored. They are out of control.” They might be incessant chain smokers, or perhaps feel no compulsion to answer trivial inquiries, only tilting their heads slightly when at a loss for words. Their effort lies in understanding what labor is not; in inciting insolence, laziness, and aimless wandering — all that remains of true importance within our current system. It’s a rejection. A quest for quality.
