Peter Fischli David Weiss: Garten (Garden) / Fondation Beyeler

In the context of the 2016 exhibition Alexander Calder & Fischli/Weiss, Peter Fischli and David Weiss’ work Garden has been re-created on a plot of land neighboring Fondation Beyeler. Garden was conceived bei Peter Fischli and David Weiss for the 1997 edition of the public art exhibition Skulptur Projekte Münster, which is staged every ten years in Münster, Germany. For their second contribution of the event, Fischli/Weiss created a temporary garden as an art project, “70 percent vegetable garden, 30 percent community garden”. It consisted of an array of beds and a compost heap and included a shelter with seating and a shed for garden tools and other equipment. It was planted with local vegetables and fruit as well as with herbs and owers; its horticultural splendor lay in its comprehensive ordinariness. The layout and planting complied with ecological guidelines and were also subject to aesthetic considerations. Thus, Garden was governed by a fragile balance between charm and yield, utility and beauty, cultivation and contingency, order and disorder, artificiality and naturalness. Usually a vegetable garden is a private place, but here, visitors were invited to enter and experience its ambience. At the same time, the temporary microcosm never disclosed its nature as a work of art.

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Peter Fischli David Weiss: Garten (Garden), 1997, 2016 Re-creation / Fondation Beyeler, Riehen (Basel, Switzerland), August 15, 2016.

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Complete video (12:19 min.):

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