John Armleder, © The artist & Woaw Gallery
John M. Armleder, born in 1948 in Geneva, Switzerland, is a renowned visual artist, painter, sculptor and performer with a career spanning over five decades. A co-founder of the Ecart Group (1969) and closely associated with the Fluxus movement, Armleder is celebrated for his polymorphic body of work that integrates performance, painting, sculpture and installation. His art is marked by a profound interconnection between life and art, the appropriation of objects and the blending of diverse influences, including Dada, Minimalism, Suprematism and Neo-Dada, defying categorization.
Armleder gained international acclaim for his "Furniture Sculpture" series (1979), combining iconic design pieces with abstract or monochrome paintings to critique the ornamental trivialization of art. He is also known for his "Pour and Puddle Paintings" inspired by Larry Poons and characterized by an open acknowledgment of their fabrication processes, rejecting formal and stylistic constraints. His works frequently incorporate chance methods, a conceptual approach inspired by John Cage.
Throughout his career, Armleder has exhibited globally in prestigious venues, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Kunsthalle Zürich and Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt). Notable recent solo exhibitions include the Musée Régional d’Art Contemporain (France, 2023), Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai, 2021) and Aspen Art Museum (Colorado, 2019). His works are part of esteemed collections such as MoMA (New York), Kunstmuseum Basel and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Denmark).