ART CITIES:London-Richard Artschwager
Richard Artschwager’s work has been classified as Pop Art due to the work’s derivation from utilitarian objects; Minimalist, in reference to Artschwager’s use of reductive geometric forms; and Conceptual in describing the cerebral quality of the work. However, Artschwager often sought to confound such art-historical categories and challenge the relationship between perception and illusion. Artschwager’s early career as a furniture designer is evident in his later sculpture, which often mimicked the forms of furniture, employed synthetic materials such as Formica, and invoked a Minimalist aesthetic, probing the distinction between art and design.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gagosian Archive
Richard Artschwager’s solo exhibition “Live in Your Head: Richard Artschwager’s Cabinet of Curiosities” was conceived specifically in response to the Davies Street Gagosian Gallery space. Spanning the five decades of Artschwager’s the installation is arranged like objects in a Joseph Cornell box. It also recalls a 16th century cabinet of curiosity (a collection of specimens, relics, and other marvels that was displayed as a microcosm of its owner’s knowledge and experience). Artschwager studied science and mathematics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York before and after serving as an intelligence officer in the Second World War. In making art, he revealed an empirical fascination with artifacts both extraordinary and banal, deriving surreal results from everyday sources, whether through shifts in scale or transpositions of forms from one material to another.The exhibition is named for a sculpture titled “Live in Your Head” (2002) that is itself a reference to Harald Szeemann’s paradigmatic 1969 group exhibition of the same title, in which Artschwager participated. “Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form” upended fixed ideas about the art of the time, namely, the relationship between artist, viewer, space, and curator. Artschwager’s work engages and activates the environment it inhabits, often guiding viewers’ attention to the discreet or overlooked. His signature “blps” (visual ciphers that are introduced into locations both indoor and outdoor at wildly varying scales) animate spaces that are habitually forgotten or unused, such as corners and crannies, or even the upper reaches of a Manhattan smokestack. “Bristle Corner” (1995) functions in a similar way to the “blps”, in three dimensions, its appearance shifting according to one’s viewpoint. In “Walker” (1964), Artschwager redacted the familiar stabilizing aid into a geometric sculpture totally detached from function. In “Klock” (1989), a small timepiece is set into a wooden body with winglike protrusions—a playful embodiment of the idiom “time flies”—while the sculptures “Exclamation Point (Yellow)” (2001) and “Pregunta II” (1983) render the idea of a grammatical figure designed to literally interrupt space and time as primary form and content.
Born in 1923 in Washington, DC, Richard Artschwager initially began studying at Cornell University in 1941, but World War II interrupted his studies. After sustaining a head wound, he spent most of the war on administrative duty in Frankfurt, Germany, and held a subsequent intelligence posting in Vienna, Austria. Upon returning to the United States, he completed his BA in 1948 in physics, but later moved to New York to follow his desire to work as an artist. He traveled to Paris, France, through the G.I. Bill to study under Amédée Ozenfant, after which he began designing and producing furniture to earn an income, which would greatly impact his later work in fine art. In the 1960s, he began experimenting with functional objects as well as painting and sculpture, and often worked with Formica to produce work that satisfied the requirements of different types of objects. His oeuvre in general investigates the distinctions between representational imagery and real objecthood.
Info: Gagosian Gallery, 17–19 Davies Street, London, Duration: 17/1-7/3/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://gagosian.com
