Peter Fischli was born on June 8, 1952, in Zurich, and David Weiss was born on June 21, 1946, in the same city. Fischli studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Urbino, Italy (1975–76), and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna (1976–77). Weiss studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich (1963–64) and the Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel (1964–65). They began to collaborate in 1979 and had their first solo exhibition in 1981, at the Galerie Balkon in Geneva. Resisting any specific style, medium, or material, their work explores the poetics of banality—the sublimity of the objects and events constituting everyday life. Indebted to Dada [more], Surrealism [more], Pop, and Conceptual art [more], their photographs, videos, slide projections, films, books, sculptures, and mixed-media installations rely on keen observation and uncanny wit.

Sausage Series (1979) was Fischli and Weiss’s first collaborative project, setting the tone for their future work. These ten color photographs present an array of staged vignettes created in miniature using foodstuffs and other household items. In The Carpet Shop shows cold cuts doubling as floor coverings. The Accident depicts a group of humans in the form of cigarette butts gawking at the aftermath of a collision between two sausage automobiles. Playful, humorous, and naive, these fantastical creations embody the artists’ disdain for Bedeutungkitsch (the kitsch of heavy meaning) in contemporary art.

Their series Suddenly This Overview (1981) consists of 250 small sculptures of unfired clay, addressing three main themes: imagined moments from the lives of famous people (Freud’s Anna O, Marco Polo), popular opposites (like high and low art), and everyday objects (a loaf of bread, peanuts, a machine gun). Fischli and Weiss further animated the commonplace in Quiet Afternoon (1984–85) and The Way Things Go (1985–87). In the photographs comprising the former, kitchen utensils, vegetables, tires, chairs, bottles, and so on, have been arranged in delicate balancing acts, seeming to defy gravity. Their latent energy is unleashed in The Way Things Go, a film of a chain reaction created by the artists using many of the same props. Objects tumble, roll, and fall into one another in this slapstick kinetic comedy, bringing to mind Rube Goldberg cartoons and the sculptures of Jean Tinguely.

Airports and Images, Views, two series of color photographs, were published as books by Fischli and Weiss in 1989 and 1991. The first is a collection of unremarkable images of airplanes sitting on tarmacs. The second comprises an inventory of views of the world’s most familiar tourist destinations (the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, Stonehenge), like those found on postcards and in guidebooks, coupled with overly sweet photographs of generic subjects (a butterfly, apples, a kitten). Atelier/Bus (1994), a video cataloguing the artists’ daily routines, exemplifies a similar aesthetic of the mundane, as does their untitled installation for the 1995 Venice Biennale, an anti-epic comprised of ninety-six hours of video shown on twelve monitors, documenting a host of views and vignettes from in and around their native Zurich.

Fischli and Weiss have been making sculptures in polyurethane since the early 1980s. Works like Green Idiot (1984) and Skull (1984) bear the mark of Surrealism. More recent creations, however, rely on trompe l’oeil effects, blurring the boundary between art and common objects. The Table (1992–93) comprises refuse from their studio (ashtrays, cups, tools, empty cans and videotape containers), meticulously sculpted and hand painted. Room Under the Staircase (1993) is a full-scale re-creation of a custodian’s closet, with everything (sink, telephone, desk, paint can) carved and painted by hand.

In their recent work, Fischli and Weiss continue to pay homage to the prosaic, ruminating on art and life. The video Busi (Kitty) (2001) presents a close-up shot of a white kitten lapping milk. Question Projection (1981–2002) consists of hundreds of existential questions in numerous languages projected onto a black wall. Visible World (1986–2001) features three thousand transparencies taken by the artists during their world travels displayed on fifteen light tables. The overall beauty of the work belies the ordinariness of its individual images.

Solo exhibitions of Fischli and Weiss’s work have been organized by the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (1992), Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (1996), Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2000), and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (2003). In 1995 and 2003, they represented Switzerland in the Venice Biennale, receiving the Leone d’Oro award for their submission to the latter. Their work also appeared in the 1987 and 1997 Documenta exhibitions and in Moving Pictures at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2002 and 2003). Fischli and Weiss live and work in Zurich.