Flowers and Mushrooms

Flowers and Mushrooms is a reprint of an artist's book by the Swiss duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss, built from multiple superimposed photographic exposures of gardens and mushroom patches shot between 1997 and 1998.

Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, the 160-page book reproduces 40 color images beautifully printed on folded, unbound sheets, a format that mirrors the loose, layered logic of the double exposures themselves. The superimposed images of berries, grasses, flowers, weeds, and mushrooms in saturated color produce a hallucinogenic effect, with the artists navigating, as one critic put it, the line between beauty and kitsch.

Fischli (b. 1952) and Weiss (1946-2012) worked together from 1979 until Weiss's death, becoming known for deadpan, absurdist, and often technically inventive projects spanning sculpture, film, and photography, including the acclaimed film The Way Things Go. Flowers and Mushrooms belongs to their recurring interest in the natural world rendered strange, sitting alongside related bodies of work such as their touring rock sculptures and studio still lifes.