Peter Fischli David Weiss: Sun, Moon and Stars

Press Release

Matthew Marks is pleased to announce a special exhibition of work by Peter Fischli and David Weiss at his three galleries. The exhibition includes the new monumental installation, Sun, Moon and Stars at 522 West 22nd Street. Clay and Rubber at 523 West 24th Street features their iconic sculptures from the past two decades in these materials, while their newest sculpture, Sleeping Puppets, will be installed at 526 West 22nd Street.

Sun, Moon and Stars is an encyclopedic accumulation of 800 magazine advertisements culled from hundreds of international periodicals. Begun as a project commissioned by a Swiss corporation for its annual report, the finished project is displayed in thirty-eight wood and glass tables, totaling 330 feet in length. A dizzying redaction of late capitalism in various chromatic and themed groupings, the ads are shown in a specific order that exploits the formal, narrative and color similarities between advertisements. Among the hundreds of paired ads, the viewer will discover the curious association between the color schemes in an ad for private airplanes and another for cat food. These juxtapositions guide the viewer toward many interpretations, following a specific narrative.

Clay and Rubber includes sculptures of everyday objects’a dog dish, a drawer, a hiking boot, an ottoman’cast in black rubber or modeled in clay. The rubber sculptures were made between 1986 and 2009. The clay sculptures, in which the hands of the artists are easily visible, are more recent and are oversized. The sensuality of unfired clay and jet-black rubber provoke the viewer to consider the aesthetic beauty in everyday objects.

In the gallery at 526 West 22nd Street, the artists’ avatars, Rat and Bear, can be seen sleeping soundly on a pile of blankets, exhausted from their labors. These figures are stand-ins for their progenitors, first seen in Fischli and Weiss’s films The Least Resistance (1981) and The Right Way (1983). Here we find Rat and Bear, almost thirty years later, lost in their dreams.