Peter Fischli David Weiss: Airports and Cars

Galerie Eva Presenhuber is pleased to present Airports and Cars, the gallery’s fourth exhibition by Peter Fischli (*1952) and David Weiss (1946–2012).

Fischli Weiss began the Airports series in 1987 and continued it for 25 years. The first photographs were taken at a time when the notion of photography as art was gaining traction—partly due to the Düsseldorf School of Photography, members of which Fischli Weiss were in dialog. Artistic positions were established that presented documentary photographs as tableaus in exhibition spaces. Similarly, the Airports have a structural affinity to easel pictures in size and presentation. However, the pictures rarely appear monumental; they were taken casually and manage without formal composition. The series has also been presented as a slideshow and two artists’ books (the first with 40 photographs in 1990, the second with 800 in 2012). In its pictorial rhetoric and form of distribution, the Airports series can be linked to photographic projects of early conceptual art—such as Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963) by Ed Ruscha or Homes for America (1966–1967) by Dan Graham.