As Fischli and Weiss became increasingly successful, they often found themselves zigzagging across the globe and, in turn, spending a great deal of time in airports. The setting proved as intriguing as the famous locales the artists documented for “Visible World”, and soon generated its own series of photographs. These familiar vistas of runways, parking lots, lounges, and hangars offer few clues to differentiate one transportation hub from another. Their plodding similitude – varying configurations of airplanes, ground equipment, fuel trucks, and baggage carriers – highlights the generic routine of getting people from one place to another. At the same time, the photos convey the intricacies behind the everyday events of global travel.

The suggestion that one blue sky or tarmac could replace any other emphasizes the peculiar sense of disconnected time that airports engender. Travelers are neither here nor there. While they are reminders of the monotony of traveling to and from various destinations, they are also static surfaces onto which viewers can project their own flights of fancy.

When encountered as an endless series of projected slides, the specific conglomerations of buildings and landing strips depicted in “Airports” lose meaning, instead opening gateways to personal escape and portals through which to return home.

Cortesia dos artistas e Galerie Eva Presenhuber