Artists

Peter Fischli

Press release

Peter Fischli’s work takes as its starting point the image of sightseeing trains on wheels that guide passengers through cities, imposing a controlled and standardized visual experience. Fischli deconstructs these so-called “trackless trains” into a series of disparate parts, with carriages at times flipped, overturned or otherwise rendered useless, prompting reflection on mass tourism and on the consumability of history and culture. The trains traverse the space of the former FIAT factory’s ramp vertically, following an impossible path that metaphorically connects the Lingotto building’s base—which houses a shopping center—to its cultural summit, represented by the museum on the rooftop racetrack. At the same time, the fragmentation of the image echoes that of Futurist imagery, which advanced an idea of modernity and progress that the Lingotto symbolizes: the logical and repetitive process of its industrial past is reflected this time in the absurdity and futility of Fischli’s trains, where even human experience is a commodity on an assembly line.