Richard Artschwager: Objects as Images of Objects

Described variously as Minimalist, Conceptualist, Pop and (more recently) proto-Neo-Geo, Richard Artschwager’s art has long defied easy categorization, a sure sign that he has been doing something right. His career as a sculptor and draughtsman has playfully engaged issues of surface, material, object and function to pose repeatedly the Duchampian question: what constitutes an art object? Objects as Images of Objects is a 40-year survey of drawings in charcoal, ink and pastel, from the 1960s to the present, by an artist for whom drawing has remained primary, a spine of continuity throughout his many preoccupations. The diversity of imagery contained in these works on paper–including colorfully surreal landscapes and ambiguous shapes and objects that wreak havoc with cognition, sometimes floating on a sheet or arranged in different perspectives, other times taken from photographs and newspapers–reflect the artist’s highly idiosyncratic approach to image-making.