John M. Armleder
° 1948
Born in Genève (CH).
John Armleder (b. 1948) is a Swiss painter, sculptor and performance artist who since the 1960s has been working on a particularly extensive and varied oeuvre that cannot be categorised in any particular style or movement. He covers the broad field of conceptual art, with varying attention to Fluxus, Constructivism, design and New Geometry (Neo-Geo). At the end of the sixties he is co-founder of the Ecart Gallery in Geneva, where, among others, Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol exhibit. Armleder has always been careful not to adhere to a specific style, and considers the person of the artist as subordinate to the oeuvre that he produces. As a conceptual artist, he focuses on formal capacity: he brings together canvases, sculptures and interior objects in a space that creates specific patterns and associations that can be completely different elsewhere or at different times. Through the inclusion of decorative art and objects from daily life, he aims to point out the lack of categorical difference between them and other artistic forms. In 2005 the bulky catalogue raisonné of his oeuvre is published with the telling title About nothing, a book with more than 600 depicted works without a subject or specific meaning. It typifies the seriousness as well as the humour of this artist.
Text: Hans Willemse
Translations: Michael Meert
