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Untitled (Flowers), 1997–98 (detail). Portfolio of 111 inkjet prints, 29 1/8 x 42 1/3 inches each. Edition 3/9. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Purchased with funds contributed by the International Director's Council and Executive Committee Members. 99.5267 |
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Peter Fischli and David Weiss have been collaborating since 1979 on a body of work that humorously celebrates the sheer banality of everyday existence. As contemporary flaneurs, they observe their world with bemused detachment, reveling in the mundane and turning every undertaking into a leisure activity. Their delight in the ordinary is given perfect form in their flower portraits—colorful, close-up shots of garden plants in bloom or various stages of decay. As in much of their conceptually driven practice, the images undermine conventional distinctions between high and low art—a culturally enforced contrast the artists once derided in a clay sculpture of two dachshunds, one standing on its hind legs, the other on all fours. Fashioned in the spirit of amateur photography in both subject and style, the flower portraits employ the technique of double exposure to achieve dizzying layered effects. The process allowed the artists to exploit their collaborative approach: one would shoot an entire roll of film in a suburban rose garden; the other would rewind it and then shoot the same roll in a park in Zurich. Deliberately decorative, these photographs push the limits of acceptability in Conceptual art. The cumulative effect is one of abundance and kaleidoscopic visual pleasure. |
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