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Peter Fischli and David Weiss at Tate Modern

Stephen Freer

Flowers and Questions is a major retrospective of collaborators Peter Fischli and David Weiss.

Peter Fischli and David Weiss at Tate Modern
Mick Jagger and Brian Jones going home satisfied after composing 'I Can't Get No Satisfaction') from Suddenly this Overview 1981-2006

Swiss artists Fischli and Weiss began working together in the late 1970s and their work includes sculpture, photography, film, video, and installation art.

The exhibition covers over 30 years of work and its wide variety makes it well worth the price of admission.

Fischli and Weiss find beauty in very unlikely places along with new ways of looking classical beauty. Photographs of flowers and mountain ranges are juxtaposed to photos of airports and housing developments, and the effect is a discovery of beauty in the everyday.

The two artists also like to mix the important with the unimportant. A room full of clay sculptures capture important moments in history along with not-so-important moments such as 'Herr and Frau Einstein shortly after the conception of their son, the genius Albert.'

They mix things up again in the slide projection Questions. A series of practical every-day questions like "Should I take out the trash?" are interspersed with metaphysical queries like "Does profound peace prevail at home when I'm not there?"

The sprawling collection of work just keeps going, and there isn't a disappointment to be found in any of the rooms. When approached with a sense humor and a feel for the sublime, Fischli and Weiss offer plenty of bang for your buck.

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