Screening courtesy of Icarus Films. Run time 31 minutes.
This exhibition is organized by the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.
Peter Fischli (Zurich, Switzerland, 1952 – ) and David Weiss (Zurich, Switzerland, 1946 – 2012, Zurich, Switzerland), The Ways Things Go (still), 1987, 30 minutes. Still courtesy of Icarus Films.
The Way Things Go: Peter Fischli and David Weiss
Date
NOV 25, 2026 – MAY 16, 2027
Gallery
Fine Arts Club New Media Gallery
Price
Free
Collaborating for over thirty years, Swiss artists Peter Fischli (Zurich, Switzerland, 1952 – ) and David Weiss (Zurich, Switzerland, 1946 – 2012, Zurich, Switzerland) blurred the line between art and everyday life by elevating humble objects through photography, film, and sculpture.
Dubbed by The New York Times as the “merry pranksters of contemporary art,” their sense of deadpan humor is on full display in The Way Things Go, 1987. For this work, Fischli and Weiss constructed an elaborate and precariously-balanced kinetic sculpture that they filmed in an inventive domino effect of destruction.
Fischli & Weiss’ tires, trash bags, ladders, and other household objects move on their own, rolling, bumping, and ricocheting off each other to cause chemical reactions. Their carefully constructed world stirs our sense of wonder and anticipation, while playing with ideas of order, disorder, building, and collapse.
The film will run continuously in AMFA’s Fine Arts Club New Media Gallery, inviting guests to stop in anytime and stay as long as they wish.