In the 1980’s the rising tide of postmodernism floated many boats; new collectors needed objects beside painting to collect so the pedestal made a return to the gallery’s topology getting art off the grimy post-minimal floor. The Grandchildren of Duchamp were everywhere and artists Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach, and Meyer Vaisman had the Midas touch, spinning straw into gold in a new era of photogenic, immaculately crafted objects. A half step behind this moment were tendencies in sculpture and installation that would emerge as an antidote to all things glossy after the art-market crash in the early 90’s. An international cast of cosmopolitan provocateur (Martin Kippenberger) and arty punks (Mike Kelley) had absorbed the theatricality of minimalism and displacements of Arte Povera recycling undesirable materials back into art. Gallerists whose instincts did not match the 80’s hype began to take chances with artists too early or late for neo-geo painting or ‘picture generation’ appropriation, which would make the most lasting impact.
The role the art dealer John Gibson played during this time of lowered expectations is usually overlooked. Located first uptown, later to West Broadway in Soho, and finally over to Prince and Broadway, the notoriously tight-fisted Gibson was ahead of the curve showing ‘Body’ and advanced European conceptual art while initiating movements like ‘narrative’ or ‘story’ art. Gibson thrived in an era of portability, when images and documentation could be toted across the Atlantic under one’s arm. I cannot imagine that the 80’s were conducive to Gibson’s not-a-team-player temperament, but interest shifted back to the gallery that continued to show endless Beuys multiples along with 70’s figures like Bill Beckley and the ubiquitous Dennis Oppenheim; incoming Euro’s included Bertrand Lavier, Olivier Mosset, and John Armleder who was primarily responsible for reviving critical and collector interest in this modestly scaled and appointed gallery.
I met Armleder in ’82, probably through Jean Dupuy, at the opening of Peter Frank’s ‘Young Fluxus’ show at Artist’s Space’s Hudson Street location. The show’s timing was unfortunate, looking a little folksy for this closely observed career launching pad. I found Armleder a courtly, open man whose elegant, precise drawings looked filched from a Bauhaus design class in 1929. Soon after showing with Gibson, I encountered Armleder’s disordered grouping of pictures and furniture at Pat Hearn’s chic East Village space and his poured glitter/resin Morris Louis knockoffs at Daniel Newburg gallery in Tribeca. Armleder’s installations of ‘lyrical’ abstract paintings exhibited in tandem with furniture actualized the collector’s request for the ‘couch painting’, art that, to paraphrase David Salle, ‘…did a number of things in addition to making the room look better’. 80’s Armleder may have been a truly ‘post-studio’ artist, a conceptual materialist traveling from gig to gig conjuring up anticipated exhibitions out of the ‘pre-owned’ probably employing the host gallery as temporary studio space. I regarded his early presentations of askew, ‘customized’ furnishings as resolutely Swiss in their modulated impulse to disrupt the norm, running ‘counter-clockwise’ to the perception of national complacency and order. Dada Zurich is the birthplace of this resistance that may be traced through Tinguely’s suicidal machine, Christian Marclay’s album cover mash ups, and Pipilotti Rist’s spree of gleeful windshield destruction.
Happily Gianni Jetzer at the Swiss Institute has gathered 13 of Armleder’s works from 1979-2012 and installed them at their cavernous Wooster Street location. The shopping mecca Soho is an appropriate district to reacquaint oneself with Armleder in its proximity to high end retail widow dressing and to the towering glass box residencies of the very well to do. The gallery’s address is also footsteps away from Colin DeLand’s legendary American Fine Arts, which showed the first grim constructions of Cady Noland along with Jessica Stockholders vivid abstract accumulations. In addition, this space was recently a Jeffrey Deitch outpost, the scene of skateboarding and Fischerspooner extravaganzas, events that somehow sold a certain kind of art to a certain kind of person in ways I never understood. What is immediately striking is the public’s adjustment to scale-big art for big rooms. While the ‘paintings’ remain grand, all the other objects function in the manner of their actual size. Decades ago this work would have been monumental, now it feels typical. It makes sense that most of these works were produced after a California sojourn; the Marshall amplifiers, ‘hard edge’ paintings doubling as wall graphics, surfboards, Brooks Brother suits, LUDWIG drum set, and a single bowling ball emit a fun fun fun west coast vibe. Viewed as a whole the exhibition recalls the ‘trophy’ or ‘show’ room, operating somewhere between the decorative and symbolic. Armleder’s family were hoteliers and I am convinced this informed his eye for décor and visually rhyming relationships between the inanimate. Hotels are sites of transition where the generic is often welcomed and kitsch tolerated-a nice view and clean towels (Armleder provides blankets in ‘Furniture Sculpture 228, 1989/2012) is what everyone really wants. Missing here (with two discrete exceptions) are works that have been painted upon in an off-register Supremacist style, many of which were shown with John Gibson. While graffiti art came and went in the 80’s art world, Armleder’s occasionally damaged goods connected with this condoned form of vandalism; think of Malevich, El Lissitzky et al as a downtown ‘crew’ breaking into the winter palace armed with cans of spray paint.
As the 80’s boom receded, John Armleder’s art was welcomed in New York by informed collectors and artists seeking relief from the shrewd banality of a Jeff Koons but certainly setting the stage for a Damien Hirst. This show is John Armleder’s first local exhibition in eight years and is accompanied by an publication which includes an essay by Robert Nickas and period black and white installation shots which convey the basic, no frills gallery spaces (radiators and stationary lighting) before money and art were super sized.
Article by Tim Maul (11/2012); all images © Daniel Perez 2012
John Armleder has published Steal These Books with onestar press and The Glitter Book with Three Star Books
