CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/22/2015

No Problem: Cologne/New York 1984-1989

Peter Fischli and David Weiss' "Grater with Carrot and Zucchini" (1984-1985) is reproduced from David Zwirner Books' superb examination of the late-80s art scenes of Cologne and New York—the centers, at the time, of the biggest developments in the international art world. Bob Nickas writes, "The significance of the art of the 80s resides not only in an image of its own making, but in an immediately recognizable identity, rather than one that formed by official consensus over time. Many works achieved an iconicity with their initial appearance. Images were, in a very potent sense, self-aware, and art in this period would encounter and engage its 'double,' images echoing others, from both art history and popular culture, invoking the presence of the past and an ever-present now, at times uneasily. In their intent, the engagements could be facile or complex, either retrograde or willfully meant to reorient and disorient art's axis, and one quickly learned to differentiate between advance and retreat. In that moment, as may no longer be true for our own, the future still had a future."