Fischli / Weiss

The idea behind Haus was first implemented by Peter Fischli (b. 1952) and David Weiss (1946-2012) as part of Sculpture Projects Münster in 1987. Haus was intended as a 1:5 scale representation of a four-storey commercial building in the modern international style, which was to atmospherically fit into Münster’s cityscape “near the railway station, between the cinema and the sausage stand”. It was dismantled when the exhibition ended. In 2016, for the Fischli/Weiss retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, it was recreated in cast aluminium on the basis of the original plans.

As of May 2018, this work is permanently installed on a lawn in front of the cycle-racing track Offene Rennbahn Oerlikon. In a 2006 interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, David Weiss explained that Haus was already retrospective in nature when it first came about: “The observer of the building becomes slightly melancholy because it represents a disappearing era, a time when people still had very different hopes to today.”  At its new permanent location in the middle of Oerlikon

Haus acts as an intact fragment of memory that silently counters the incessant expansions and alterations.

Courtesy of the artists and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich.
Supported by Maja Hoffmann/Luma Foundation