In the spring of 2016, Swiss art duo Peter Fischli and Davis Weiss had a retrospective at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum titled “How to Work Better.” At the time I was in the throes of a miserable relationship—you know, one of those affairs that makes the world around you smaller and smaller until you lose perspective of it and all you are. I wanted to know how to work better.
I’ve always alleged that the Guggenheim is at its best when it becomes a part of the exhibit, a maze that, with the art, guides you on a path in search of something bigger—and so I went, seeking answers. But what you actually get from Fischli and Weiss—or their furry alter egos, Rat and Bear—are questions. They poke, they prod, they remind you of life’s dualities: chaos and order, cause and effect, the ordinary and extraordinary, play and seriousness. It’s in everything they do, it’s their Midas touch—even their sculptures in clay, the everlasting medium, are left unfired and easily broken.
Walking through the exhibition, profundities were revealed. In Will Happiness Find Me?, 2003, a work which shifts in form from artist book to projection containing over 1,200 questions, they ask, “IS IT DANGEROUS TO DREAM OF ANOTHER LIFE ALL THE TIME?” I wrote this down in my notebook. I walked out and knew the relationship was over.
-Jashin Friedrich