Michael Asher (artist)

Michael Asher, also known as Mike Asher ( born July 15, 1943 in Los Angeles, California, USA, † October 14, 2012 ibid ), was an American conceptual artist. His art is not primarily created new art objects; typically they changed instead the existing environment, for example by repositioning or removing items, works of art, walls or facades.

Life and work

Michael Asher was born in 1943 as son of the gallery Betty and Dr. Leonard Asher in Los Angeles. He studied until 1966 at the University of California, Irvine.

Michael Asher is one of the first conceptual artists in the United States. His work took the form of " subtle but deliberate interventions - additions, changes or subtractions - particularly in and of environments ." In the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was the division of gallery spaces by partitions and curtains, or the design of environments by reflection or absorption of sound and noise.

In 1969 he had his first solo exhibition at the La Jolla Museum of Art in the 1970s, he began to change rooms by remote, for example, layers of paint by sandblasting. Since 1979, he positioned now also in museums collection objects. His first work permanently installed and public in the United States is the untitled granite fountain next to a flag on the campus of the University of California, San Diego from 1991.

Michael Asher was a teacher at the California Institute of the Arts, where he taught the "Post- Studio Art " course.

Michael Asher participated in the Documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972 in the Department of Individual Mythologies: Processes and Documenta 7 in 1982 in part. He exhibited at the Venice Biennale ( 1976) and four times in the Skulptur.Projekten in Münster in 1977, 1987, 1997 and 2007. In Münster, he placed during the exhibitions of Skulptur.Projekte a caravan of twelve weekly changing, unglamorous locations. He had already established in 1977 These locations. The main interest of Asher was the tension between rigid form and moving space: The caravan, which remained the same over the decades, was positioned at stations in the city that constantly changed. An ongoing photo documentation made ​​these changes visible during the exhibition and since 1977.

He had important solo exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris ( 1991), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art ( 2003), the Art Institute of Chicago (2005) and the Santa Monica Museum of Art ( 2008). In spring 2010, he was awarded the highly doped Bucksbaum Award from the Whitney Biennial, including a residence scholarship and a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in the fall of the year.

Awards

  • 2000 - Art Prize of Aachen
  • 2010 - Bucksbaum Award, New York City

Literature and sources

  • Exhibition catalog: documentation fifth survey of reality - imagery today; Catalog (as folders ) Volume 1: (material); Volume 2: ( list of exhibits ); Kassel in 1972
  • Documenta Archiv (ed. ); Resubmission d5 - A survey of the archive to the documenta, 1972; Kassel / Ostfildern 2001, ISBN 3-7757-1121- X
  • Catalog: documenta 7 in Kassel; Vol 1: ( Visual biographies of artists ); Vol 2: ( Current works of the artist); Kassel 1982 ISBN 3-920453-02-6
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