John Armleder

John Armleder works exploratively between painting, sculpture, installation and performance. In a career spanning five-decades, Armleder seems decidedly hesitant to become comfortable with a singular media. Over the years, he’s drafted large scale abstract canvases, dripping in luminous strands of paint, he’s transformed furniture into sculpture, hanging tables to the wall like paintings, and he’s crafted elaborate performances with bizarre, absurdist costumes. In the 1960s, Armleder was a student of Fluxus in Geneva which informed his decision to found the Ecart Group in Switzerland. Later in the 1980s, Armleder was associated with Neo-Geometric Conceptualism and he continues to draw on the legacy of movements such as Dada and Abstract Expressionism. Musicians such as John Cage have also been key influences, with Cage’s sonic experimentations mirroring Armleder’s own creative curiosity. Although Armleder’s works have aesthetically morphed over the years, a sense of playfulness permeates each work. Using humour as his most regular tool, Armleder weilds together tropes and trends of various movements or specific creatives, synthesizing their impact to create pieces which continue to question the role of art today.