The Serpentine Gallery is presenting an installation by the Swiss artists Fischli/Weiss. This will be the first and the only public sculpture by the artists to be presented in the UK and one of the last works jointly conceived by the artists before David Weiss’s untimely death last year. This unique installation titled, ‘Rock on Top of Another Rock’ will be located in Kensington Gardens, situated outside the Serpentine Gallery, echoes the earliest and most basic types of monuments found around the world: two colossal rocks seemingly balanced precariously one on top of the other.
‘In Norway and here, to put one rock on top of another rock in the wilderness is the first thing you do if you want to make a mark. When you walk and you want to find your way back… you make this mark. 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.’ Peter Fischli
Formed of two glacial igneous granite boulders and standing approximately 5.5 metres high on a concrete base, the monumental sculpture will be visible from a number of viewpoints in the Park. With this deceptively simple gesture, Fischli/Weiss have once again achieved the delicate balancing act of creating a work that is at once incongruous and startling, and yet entirely in tune with its site – both locally and historically. Sourced in Wales and reminiscent of the many Neolithic monuments found throughout the British countryside, Fischli/Weiss’s rocks are imbued with their unmistakeable wit and a serious sense of the absurd. Fischli/Weiss have continuously demonstrated that irony and sincerity could not exist without each other and that, in fact, there is no sincerity like irony.
Fischli/Weiss Rock on Top of Another Rock 7 March 2013 – 6 March 2014