Museum survey juxtaposes the work of Fischli and Weiss to form new dialogues (photo by David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation)
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Through April 27, $25
Peter Fischli New School talk: Monday, April 25, $10, 6:30
212-423-3587
www.guggenheim.org
events.newschool.edu
Peter Fischli and David Weiss’s engaging, subversive DIY style is on full display in their first major museum retrospective, “How to Work Better,” on view at the Guggenheim through April 27. Known as Fischli/Weiss, the Zürich-born artists began their long collaboration in the late 1970s, continuing through Weiss’s death in 2012 at the age of sixty-five. The duo specialized in reimagining everyday objects, using synthetic rubber, unfired clay, and polyurethane, with a kitschy sense of humor. The exhibition pairs series from throughout their career, bringing together disparate elements to create a dialogue that gets to the heart of their method and process as they investigate form and structure. The sculptures of “Walls, Corners, and Tubes” are seen with “Kanalvideo,” a psychedelic trip through the sewers of Zürich. “Cars” and “Hostesses” turn the titles into miniature representations in white plaster. One floor is dedicated to “Suddenly This Overview,” a collection of hundreds of unfired clay miniatures that they called “The Subjective Tableaux,” exploring the whole of human existence, featuring such works as “Mick Jagger and Brian Jones Going Home Satisfied after Composing ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,’” “Panic in the Audience When Lumière Shows His Film,” and “The Russians Launch the First Rocket into Space.” Fischli and Weiss essentially re-created their studio in numerous polyurethane installations, crafting art materials, soda cans, cleaning supplies, jars of food, and other objects out of polyurethane, forcing viewers to questions everything they see.
Fischli and Weiss’s polyurethane installations re-create their studio environment while questioning what is real (photo by David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation)
The duo asks its own questions in “Question Projections,” in which a seemingly endless stream of inquiries are projected onto a dark wall, asking, among other things, “Is it more important for the world or for me to be doing well?,” “Why does nothing never happen?,” “Where are all those rats coming from?,” and “Is hunger an emotion?” The survey also highlights Fischli and Weiss’s films starring their alter egos, Rat and Bear — Order and Cleanliness, The Least Resistance, and The Right Way — in addition to their most popular work, The Way Things Go, a thirty-one-minute video in which everyday objects, from tires, bottles, and balloons to ladders, candles, and garbage bags, form a supposedly seamless chain reaction that is actually made up of twenty-three shots. Among the other series and installations accumulated in “How to Work Better,” which was initiated while Weiss was still alive, are “Visible World,” “The Raft,” “Sausage Series,” and “Fotografías,” celebrating the full range of the artists’ oeuvre. “Fischli and Weiss deliberately drew attention to the intersection of art and manual labor throughout their practice,” curator Nancy Spector writes in the catalog. “Even though they consistently presented themselves as carefree observers of the world at large . . . the artists also slyly exposed the concerted effort behind their artmaking.” But most of all, “How to Work Better” is fun. In conjunction with the show, the text-based wall mural “How to Work Better” can be seen on the corner of Houston and Mott Streets through May 1; the Public Art Fund project offers ten pieces of advice, including “Do one thing at a time,” “Learn to ask questions,” and “Accept change as inevitable.” On Monday, April 25, Fischli, who will turn sixty-four in June, will deliver a talk at the New School about his and Weiss’s public works, one of which stands outside the Guggenheim: “Haus,” an inviting structure that offers no way inside.
Being gay and an Orthodox Jew just doesn’t mix. Sandi Simcha DuBowski’s award-winning documentary, Trembling Before G-d, takes a close look at gay Orthodox and Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, Miami, Jerusalem, and London who are either rejected by their religious community or remain hidden in the closet, unable to express in public who they are. Many of the subjects use fake names and are shot in silhouette or by a handheld camera that never shows their full faces, in order to protect their identity; these powerful images get right to the heart and soul of the matter. The naysayers point out that the Bible clearly states that homosexuality is wrong, and they still believe that gays can be “cured” through therapy and atonement ceremonies for sexual sins or by eating figs. The film is having a special fifteenth-anniversary screening at the IFC Center as part of the Stranger than Fiction series and will be followed by what should be a lively and fascinating Q&A with DuBowski and subjects Rabbi Steve Greenberg, Michelle, Naomi, and Mark that should explore whether anything has changed in the last decade and a half. The series continues through May 31 with such other documentaries as Lynn True’s In Transit, Holly Morris’s The Babushkas of Chernobyl, and Ido Haar’s Presenting Princess Shaw, with Princess Shaw present for a Q&A.
Danish actor, writer, playwright, and director Christian Tafdrup takes the relationship between mother, father, and child to a whole new extreme in the dark, bittersweet Parents. When their son, Esben (Anton Honik), moves out to seek his own path in life, Kjeld (played by Søren Malling and Elliott Crossett Hove) and Vibeke (Bodil Jørgensen and Miri-Ann Beuschel) immediately start suffering from empty nest syndrome, especially as Esben seems to need them only to do his laundry. Kjeld returns to the apartment he shared with Vibeke when they were young lovers, hoping to rekindle the flame. But when a Twilight Zone-like twist upends the family dynamic, Esben, Kjeld, and Vibeke must redefine who they are and what they want out of life. Tafdrup, who appears as the realtor in the film, balances the real and the surreal with mixed results, as there are gaping plot holes that can be extremely frustrating, but it all comes together by the conclusion. Malling (
“When you create a story about yourself that’s based on a lie about who you are and who your family is, sooner or later it’s bound to be revealed,” political journalist Anne Applebaum says at the beginning of Joseph Martin and Sam Blair’s engrossing documentary, Keep Quiet. “Who are we really?” In 2012, Csanád Szegedi was a terrifying young star in Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party, one of the founders of the paramilitary, pro-Nazi, nationalist Hungarian Guard, rising to election to the European Parliament on the strength of a resurgent, virulent anti-Semitism. “I wanted everyone to believe in the world as I saw it,” he says in the film. “Anti-Semitism and discrimination of Jews was a powerful motivation.” But it all came crumbling down when the public heard an audio recording of the young leader’s phone conversation with disgruntled Jobbik party member Zoltán Ambrus, who tells Szegedi that his family is actually Jewish. At first Szegedi refuses to believe it, but soon his maternal grandmother is admitting to him that she is indeed a Holocaust survivor, with a number tattooed on her arm and memories of the camps. Martin (Win a Baby, Scientologists at War) and Blair (Personal Best, Maradona ’86) detail how Szegedi dealt with this dramatic revelation as the conflicted man shares his innermost thoughts, meets with Orthodox Rabbi Boruch Oberlander, and travels to Auschwitz with Holocaust survivor Eva “Bobby” Neumann. He undergoes a radical transformation that not everyone trusts as the film explores who we are, the impact of where we come from, and whether blood trumps all. Keep Quiet is particularly relevant in a world that is experiencing yet another frightening rise in anti-Semitism, especially in Europe. Martin and Blair also delve into Hungary’s history with the Jews, and it’s not a very pleasant one. The film gets to the very heart of the matter, examining the nature of religious hatred in one man who reevaluates everything he believes in when the tables are suddenly turned. Keep Quiet, which features a beautiful score by cellist and composer Philip Sheppard, is screening in the World Documentary Competition at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 18, 19, and 20, with Martin, Blair, Rabbi Oberlander, and Szegedi present on April 18 to discuss the film.