#HTE

‘Ten Lessons For How to Work Better’ Installed Six Stories Tall in NYC

Peter Fischli and David Weiss’s “How to Work Better” mural, Public Art Fund, via NYRDaily

An iconic mural towers over the intersection of New York’s Houston and Mott Streets, a 50-foot-tall piece produced in tandem with the Guggenheim’s exhibition “Peter Fischli and David Weiss: How to Work Better.” The simple, ten-point list is one that is not uncommon, in fact it is one often encountered in artists’ studios and offices tacked up as a reminder of effective work patterns and collaboration.

The readymade work is an adaptation of a list the artists discovered in a ceramics factory in Thailand three decades ago. Critic John Kelsey notes in the exhibitions’s catalogue that, “Taken from a factory in Thailand and displayed in a supremely wealthy nation with one of the strictest immigration policies in Europe, the text becomes an ironic reflection on the way things go for commuter drones within a productively mobilized post-society, some of whom happen to be artists and curators: ‘SMILE.’”

Even observed without the history of the mural, the piece speaks to the modern notion of always being busy, a reminder to slow down rather than rush through each subsequent task. The mural is a collaboration between the Public Art Fund, Fischli, and Guggenheim curators Nancy Spector and Nat Trotman. (via Guggenheim blog)