Richard Artschwager is interested in reason developed in physical space as a light skimming of the flux of experience, occasionally supplementing or grafting into the net of instincts. In art-making, any such skimmings are stirred back into flux to increase their potency. You see this in art made 30 millinia ago and also 30 days ago. Nothing is thrown away. Editing, pruning, distillation, abridgement in general, are for the most part foreign to it, but integral to reason as embodied in language-that Procrustean practice. (Artschwager, Richard. "Art and Reason." Parkett. Number 23. March 1990, p. 36-38).

Biography

Richard Artschwager was born in Washington, D.C. but spent much of his youth in New Mexico. He enrolled in Cornell University in 1941, and received his B.A. in 1948, interrupted by a tour of duty in the U.S. Army during World War II. Shortly thereafter, he began to study art in New York City, enrolling in the studio school of Amedee Ozenfant. By the mid 1950's he was building and designing furniture to support his young family. Artschwager began making paintings and sculptures using pre-fab building materials such as formica and celotex.

The first solo exhibition of his work was at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, NY in 1965. Since then, his work has been shown in numerous solo and group shows throughout the world. His art is housed in many private and public collections including The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Centre George Pompidou, Paris, France; The Tate Modern, London, England; and MAK, Vienna, Austria.

Recently, Artschwager showed work at Kunstmuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland; the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL.