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Lot Essay
John M. Armleder has said of his practice that he is "interested in all the ways it's possible to make works disappear," which, expressed from a different angle, can also be to engage with the theory of work as "décor." As a child, in his parents' hotel, he experienced the hospitality industry's opulence and constant mutability. If a suite needed to be redecorated to a new guest's taste, an instant transformation was effected. Of this, perhaps, was born John Armleder's comfortable dialogue with both finish and furniture.
Best characterized as an omnivore, John Armleder has been linked since 1967 with Fluxus and with Conceptual art, and has worked in painting, drawing, sculpture and readymade materials, while simultaneously operating an alternative art space called Ecart. Two recent full-scale retrospectives held in 2006, one at the ICA in Boston and one at the Mamco in Geneva, demonstrate the sprawling range of Armleder's work and marked him as one of the art world's most nonchalantly ambitious and perverse practitioners.
Deliberate excess is part of John Armleder's vocabulary. Universal Mirror Balls consists of 10 large disco balls, which slowly rotate and throw off a riot of reflected light. They simultaneously channel Saturday Night Fever, and the hall of mirrors of Versailles. Deprived of disco music, these spheres take on a tongue-in-cheek stateliness, all the while flicking sidelong glances in the direction of Marcel Duchamp. That they are readymade is obvious, but they are so baroque and engage so well in the interregnum between decoration and nostalgia that Duchamp seems a distant and rather Spartan predecessor.
Best characterized as an omnivore, John Armleder has been linked since 1967 with Fluxus and with Conceptual art, and has worked in painting, drawing, sculpture and readymade materials, while simultaneously operating an alternative art space called Ecart. Two recent full-scale retrospectives held in 2006, one at the ICA in Boston and one at the Mamco in Geneva, demonstrate the sprawling range of Armleder's work and marked him as one of the art world's most nonchalantly ambitious and perverse practitioners.
Deliberate excess is part of John Armleder's vocabulary. Universal Mirror Balls consists of 10 large disco balls, which slowly rotate and throw off a riot of reflected light. They simultaneously channel Saturday Night Fever, and the hall of mirrors of Versailles. Deprived of disco music, these spheres take on a tongue-in-cheek stateliness, all the while flicking sidelong glances in the direction of Marcel Duchamp. That they are readymade is obvious, but they are so baroque and engage so well in the interregnum between decoration and nostalgia that Duchamp seems a distant and rather Spartan predecessor.