JOHN M ARMLEDER - FISH

Opening Saturday November 5th, 2016 12 p.m. John M Armleder is present

Gallery Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman cordially invites you, on the occasion of its five year anniversary, to the exhibition JOHN M ARMLEDER FISH. With this exhibition the gallery links to its first Viennese exhibition in November 2011, John M Armleders LATE:

John M Armleder has played a vital role in shaping postmodern European and international art practice over the last 40 years. As a co-founder of the influential Groupe Ecart in the early 1960s he helped open up new ways of producing, exhibiting and, most importantly, experiencing contemporary art to a broad public.

Armleder’s work defies easy categorisation. Despite the influence of Fluxus attitudes and the artist’s passion for the musical compositions of John Cage, Armleder’s work has always resisted the manifesto, any form of theoretical attitudes or indeed, a social or political agenda.

The objects, installations, paintings, sculptures and performances created by Armleder in recent years have always been eclectic in their nature and appearance. Through playful compositions the presented objects are often completely divorced from any formal artistic concerns. The artist actively blurs the traditional notions of the support and the surface, of the subject and object and of high and low art. As such, he challenges customary ways in which the viewer has come to perceive and experience modern and contemporary art and the nature of the places that have come to be used for its display. Armleder’s works are essentially pictorial in their compositions as they transcend the differences between decorative design and artwork. As a result, his work has always offered stirring modes of presentation whilst, at the same time, opening up the picture pane to include all its surrounding space.

In the current edition and exhibition Armleder refers to Vienna and its latter artistical and aesthetic history. He quotes Gustav Klimt (SILVER FISH, GOLD FISH) and creates furniture sculptures with the legendary Galaxy Chair by Walter Pichler and the couch Cubus by Carl Auböck II.