Parkett Vol. 17 - 1988 | Peter Fischli/David Weiss

Browse Selected Texts and more on the Collaboration Artists

Artist Insert

Artist Document: Rebecca Warren on Fischli/Weiss cover vol. 17

“The first Parkett I ever saw had this photograph on the cover, it was 1989 in the library at Goldsmiths’ College. Years later Peter Fischli told me that he and David Weiss had been walking around Zurich trying not to do very much, and had happened upon this strangely bored cat in some kind of zoo. Wanting their attention it performed this trick of sitting up. The first time I saw it struck me that something so seemingly banal could function as art. But it was obvious that it was more than just a photograph of a cat. It had a lightness to it. I don’t mean that it was weak, but rather that it had a sort of airiness; it was ambivalent, open-ended. For me seeing this gave me an understanding of what could be allowed; of having the freedom to explore a different territory, beyond the conceptual/minimal academy of the day.”

Peter Fischli / David Weiss are the collaboration artists in this volume, with texts by Patrick Frey, Germano Celant, Karen Marta, Bernhard Johannes Blume, Jeanne Silverthorne, Sidra Stich. Louise Bourgeois the insert artist.

Further texts in this issue: Max Wechsler “Imi Knoebel: The Survival of Sensation,” Paul Groot “Matt Mullican,” Kathy Halbreich “Real Abstract Theater: The Wooster Group.”

The Cumulus from Europe and America are by Ronald Jones and Reiner Speck, the Balkon by Richard Flood.

Table of Content

Imi Knoebel – The Survival of Sensation by Max Wechsler

Peter Fischli / David Weiss
Friendship is Unstable Equilibrium by Patrick Frey
Fischli/Weiss in Appearance by Germano Celant
The Path of Most Resistance by Karen Marta
Peter Fischli and David Weiss by Bernhard Johannes Blume
The Critic as Four-Eyed Peg Leg by Jeanne Silverthorne
(Dis)Ordered Artifice in the Art of Fischli/Weiss by Sidra Stich
Matt Mullican by Paul Groot
Real Abstract Theater – The Wooster Group by Kathy Halbreich

Louise Bourgeois, Insert

The View from the Chryse Plain, Cumulus from America by Ronald Jones

Heterotypology or Giving the Secret a Niche, Cumulus from Europe by Reiner Speck

Down the Airshaft by Richard Flood