John Armleder

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John Armleder (born in Geneva in 1948) is a Swiss artist. He first came on the scene during his involvement with Fluxus in the 1960's and 1970's, when he created performances, installations and collective activities. In 1969, with Patrick Lucchini and Claude Rychner, Armleder founded the Groupe Ecart in Geneva, from which stemmed the Galerie Ecart and its associated performance group and publications.

In 1969, John Armleder created the Groupe Ecart with other artists close to Fluxus and strongly influenced by John Cage, who he met early in his life. The Groupe Ecart was particularly important in Europe during the 1970's and 1980's, not only through its activity as an independent publishing house, but also because it introduced in Switzerland - and sometimes in Europe - a large number of notable artists, including Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol.^[1]

Armleder was later associated with Neo-Geo artistic movement, was often referred to as the "darling" of the New York art critics in this period.^[2][3]. He never proclaimed affiliation with the Neo-Geo movement or, indeed, any other movement. One of his positions throughout his career has been to avoid associating his artistic practice with any type of manifesto.

Since the 1990's, he has created installations, paintings, wall paintings, sculptures and what he calls "Furniture Sculptures" - installations which usually juxtapose furniture with monochrome or abstract paintings, either literally on the furniture or on a canvass hanging nearby. His work has varied greatly in form, and has, since the beginnings, used chance as a method of producing the final forms that pieces take, much like John Cage. He often uses a dense scenographic hanging style, putting individual works into close proximity and creating installation-like exhibitions.

In 2004, a retrospective exhibition of his works on paper was shown at the Kunsthalle Zurich in Zurich, Switzerland, and later travelled to the ICA in Philadelphia. In the winter of 2006-2007, a large exhibition including works from all eras of his career was shown at the Mamco (Museum of modern and contemporary art) in Geneva, Switzerland. John Armleder has been particularly influential on a young generation of artists in Switzerland, France, and probably elsewhere. His influence can be seen in the Swiss Pavillion at the 2007 Venice Biennial.

The French version of this article is listed under John M. Armleder (although, in fact, the M is not an initial, but, rather, a letter he inserted by choice, a sort of pen name). For those interested, the references cited in the French article, and the list of exhibitions, are much more complete.

[edit] External links

• Heyoka Magazine Interview with John LeKay
• John Armleder at Ace Gallery
• John Armleder, "About Nothing" ICA Philadelphia review by Steven Stern, Frieze

[edit] Notes