Reiterating the construction of Himalayan monastic tumuli to every child’s earliest playtime, Fischli/Weiss’ Rock On Top Of Another Rock is a a simple and oddly moving distillation of a universal balancing act.
The Swiss artists were comissioned by the Serpentine Gallery for their first UK public sculpture, which will reside in Hyde Park outside the gallery until March 2014. Sadly bereft of David Weiss, since the latter’s death last year, Fischli referenced Robert Venturi’s often cited Duck of Long Island, NY as a similarly semiotic totem.
‘It is a very archaic, simple thing, but it is referencing the [Robert] Venturi duck. We wanted to make something that forces you to stop your car and get out to take a photograph.’
The rocks themselves are two glacial igneous granite boulders, standing approx five and a half metres high on a concrete base. The monumental sculpture is visible from various viewpoints in the park. According to Fischli, one of the most difficult parts of creating the sculpture was locating the right rocks. During his unveiling speech, he stated in perfect deadpan, "You have in your mind an idea of what the right rocks would look like. But nature doesn’t really care about your thoughts." However, a couple of pleasureable trips through Welsh countryside and a few weeks of careful testing revealed the perfect candidates.
Siting the piece was the next puzzle; the artists mused with the ideas of where to place the boulders in relation to the site of the soon-to-complete Serpentine Sackler Gallery, by Zaha Hadid Architects, scheduled to open later this year. Rock.. also echoes a similar work executed four years ago in Norway (see the slideshow below); there, the rocks were found and moved on site, executing a minimum gesture with a maximum effect. In this case, the sculpture exists as an inflated caricature of raw, natural elements inside another other highly constructed image of nature – the urban park. Fischli/Weiss have continuously demonstrated that irony and sincerity cannot exist without each other.
The rocks themselves, Fischli confesses unequivocally, are not of primary interest: "The piling up of large things can be done relatively easily, with the machines you use to build a house".
Rather there is the fragile juxtaposition of two binary elements, a core element to much of Fischli/Weiss’ back catalogue; that is of construction and deconstruction; stability and instability; stasis and motion; order and chaos (think of The Way Things Go). Both witty and absurd, Rock.. is a work of contradictions, in a long thematic tradition echoed in early works. Indeed Fischli/Weiss’ Equilibres series, exhibited inside the Serpentine Gallery alongside a number of study models, demonstrate a lineage of fragile sculptural works balanced in exquisite precision – captured moments before their collapse.
Happily Rock.. will remain for a full four seasons in London before being permanently relocated to Doha – its sojourn in London is part of Qatar UK 2013, a year long programme of cultural exchange between the two countries. During this period Rock.. will witness not only Zaha’s new Serpentine Sackler, but also the annual Serpentine Pavilion, this year designed by Sou Fujimoto – both further ‘sculptural’ additions to Kensington Gardens.
The Serpentine will host a series of events to complement Rock.. including An Evening with Peter Fischli on 2 April 2013.
