RICHARD ARTSCHWAGER

With accessibility of his work in mind, Artschwager produced editioned multiples throughout his career, complementing his unique paintings and sculptures. Most of these editioned works were produced in the artist’s studio and released by various publishers, including Brooke Alexander, Carolina Nitsch, Multiples Inc., and Castelli Graphics. The works on view include several artist’s proofs and prototypes.

Following service in military intelligence during World War II, Artschwager studied with Parisian modernist Amédée Ozenfant in New York, but subsequently turned to furniture making to support his family. A fire that devastated his workshop in 1958 prompted him to return to fine art with paintings and sculptures that refer to the forms and materials of furniture and other quotidian objects. In terms of functionality, such works may be described as “almost furniture,” as art historian and curator Germano Celant put it, or as approximate objects.

Subverting perceived boundaries between art and object, Artschwager’s works are often associated with the major movements pioneered by his contemporaries: Pop art, for their reference to everyday items and use of industrial mediums; Minimalism, for their precisely fabricated geometric forms; and Conceptual art, for their cerebral engagement with ideas. Playing off these currents while adhering to none of them, the highly individualistic artist once declared: “-isms usually signal that something is already dead.”

Locations (1969) features five oblong forms that Artschwager called blps (pronounced “blips”), other examples of which he placed as focal points on gallery walls and in unexpected public sites. Produced in his favored mediums—wood, glass, Plexiglas, Formica, mirror, rubberized horsehair—the blp elements that comprise Locations, envisioned as a do-it-yourself blp kit, are to be installed in configurations not decreed by the artist. Other blps can be scouted in public spaces throughout Mayfair during the run of the exhibition.

Each drawer in Untitled (1971) holds a different material, though one is bottomless.Four Approximate Objects (1970–91), from which the exhibition’s title is derived, is a mahogany and Formica case that holds four metal objects designed primarily to be touched rather than observed. “The attempt here is to make things as seen by the hand,” Artschwager explained.

Other works at Burlington Arcade include_Yes/No_ (1968–74), a plastic bowling ball engraved with words that imply a playful indeterminacy. Pregunta II (1983) and Untitled (Dat, Dat, Dat, Dah) (2007) punctuate space, the symbolism of their shapes augmenting their material presence. Book (1987), Door (1987), Table (Wannabe) (2009), and Mirror/Mirror (2012) are elegant sculptural representations of familiar objects that paradoxically deny their essential functions. Time Piece and Klock (both 1989) are working clocks that respectively embody a loosely anthropomorphic form and the concept that “time flies.” Chair/Chair (1990), made as an edition of 100, actually functions as a chair—one marked by Artschwager’s intriguing philosophy of art, materials, and design.