ART REVIEW:John M Armleder

Leaning on the Fluxus Movement of the 1960s, John M Armleder with Patrick Lucchini and Claude Rychner founded in 1969 the Groupe Ecart in Geneva. Located at 6 rue Plantamour, the collective had an artist-run space which in addition to hosting the events of the collective had since 1973 a Gallery, a specialized bookstore and a publishing house all named Ecart. For the collective, the goal was to master each stage of the production of an artistic work to guarantee its freedom and independence. The artist has since the end of the 1960’s created a polymorphic body of work that spans several different mediums, ranging from painting and sculpture to design, performance, and installation. John M Armleder’s artworks that are on presentation at Almine Rech Gallery are different from those of the past, but also different from his paintings, which we first met at the exhibition “Everything that’s interesting is new” (20/1-20/4/96) in Athens, with works of Dakis Joannou Collection. Armleder gained international recognition with his “Furniture Sculpture” series from 1979, bringing together iconic examples of design and paintings to reflect on the trivialization of the artwork as an decorative accessory. The difference in his last exhibition at Almine Rech Gallery lies both in the way he is using the objects and in his paintings, which, while he began as a minimalist, abstract conceptual artist, he evolved through an intense expressionism, until his last series, where his paintings are overflowing with color, energy and liveliness, while the objects like the plants are independent in space, operating autonomously and complementary at the same time (!)–Efi Michalarou