JOHN ARMLEDER

 

Ecart

John LeKay: Can you tell me about Ecart and how that came about?

John Armleder: Ecart originally is the fallout of some of my friends from school. We were 12 years old at the time. School friends which were not related to art in any way. On one hand we were in a rowing team and doing trips and things like that. On the other, we were going to see John Cage concerts. Because I had this fascination for that, for what I don't know.  A bit later on I decided that I would get involved in art and get my friends involved in art, although they were not artists. So the Ecart group at the beginning was a group of friends and that goes back to the mid 60s, as a matter of fact. It was in 69, that we got this name Ecart, we found this name for the happening festival.  By then I was very interested and close to and had contacts with Fluxus artists. So we did a series of happenings, some of them based on John Cage scripts.  Others were related to Fluxus and other improvisations in a cellar in Geneva.

The outspring from that was to create a more permanent base; which I thought out of being in prison, because of refusing my military service. Military in Switzerland is a big thing.  Doing that, I had time to think about strategies. I decided to not go on with academic studies, like in an art school or things like that, but to create my own space, with my friends and invited people that were interested to take part in what we were doing. So I opened a gallery, opened a book shop, opened a print shop for printing artists books. Also a performance school.

JL: So it was like a multi-dimensional media space; were you selling the books?

JA: Yes, it was a regular book shop as a matter of fact. Mainly art and music. In those days the art world was much smaller. Things were not available. Following one of the Fluxus artist ideas, Robert Filliou, who said, "you shouldn't go where the scene is happening, you should bring the scene to you"  It was this idea of being autonomous and finding a way to do things. So we opened the space and since we didn't have the money to run it, or to advertise it, we thought if we borrow the means to do a print shop, then we can print stuff for us and pay for it by printing for other people and it was sort of constructed like that.

 

John-Armleder-and-Gerold-Miller

 

Chair up a tree

JL:  How did you manage to get the chair up the tree?

JA:  I was not really involved in getting it up there. There was a show in Geneva Park. A sculpture show with different artists. I was somewhere else at the time, so I told the curator that I wanted to put chairs in really high trees. I went to visit the place before and selected the trees. They used the park service and some ladders. I have no idea how they did it,  But sometimes I see the guy who did it and he tells me, it was a big job. Theoretically, we should have taken them down for security reasons, but we just left them there to rot until they would fall down.

Labels and art movements

JL: I want to ask you about labels and art movements and how critics, art dealers and some artists like to categorize artist through labels. Something you said reminded me of Dieter Roth, when you said, As for myself I don't really know what one aught to think of it, but in the end, no critic has been able to define it, on the basis of categorical judgment. My work lends itsself to impression, to openendedness because it doesn't provide any definitions and isn't defined by anything, or at least by any preordained inventory. Do you think that being labeled in some way, by art critics is a kind of cage for you?

JA: Well, yes and no, but that's how our minds work, we have to set categories in order to construct a language and to do exchanges. Of course it's extremely restrictive. On the other hand, it doesn't mean that it has to be permanent or fixed. So in one hand, I don't believe at all in these drawers that one fits or sorts out the works.  On the other hand, what happens, as an artist you find, at least what happened to me;  from time to time my work was slotted into a very specific context and defined by that context. Then later on it moved and if it wouldn't of happened, I wouldn't of had that critical reading of my own work which is so restrictive. So then it's added value, as long as you don't take it too seriously.  I mean if someone comes up to you and says your work is not this and not that; I also say yes. It's not that I believe it, but it gives me a chance to understand my work from that focus. But the things, their more than one. So the next guy is going to say it's that, something totally different and he's also right. So I always say yes.

 

 

JL: You touched on this a bit earlier when you mentioned Fluxus, your furniture sculpture and use of materials look a bit like Art Povera in some of the pieces. How much has Arte Povera influenced your work?

JA: Fluxus, you mean,

JL. Yes Fluxus and Arte Povera.

JA: Arte Povera is a little different. There's a lot of artists I like in Arte Povera; Pascali or people like that. The aesthetics of povera, they are very stern artists. As you compare them to Fluxus artists there is no distance in what they are doing. Not that kind of distance. It's true when you look at work like that, it has that Jannis Kounellis kind of touch. It is also mixed, it has the Kounellis thing, mixed with the Barnett Nuemen hard-edged kind of touch. So there's a lot of artists I like within the Arte Povera grou.. I think the fluxus artists were a seminal definition of art which is like early conceptual art in a way. George Brecht and the ideas on how George Maciunas wanted to stage art. All this reference to readymade performance; the way they used music in the classical sense for staging works and then you just perform it. That way, it gives it the slapstick touch on one hand and on the other hand it's a very pure formalism. That's something that is very wooden on the platform, on which I probably activate my work, which is this blend of dadaistic background formalism. This is present in a lot of my work. The staging of it when you see work like that - it's a combine.  A sort of Rauschenberg way of doing it. On the other hand it's very frontal; it's about painting even when it is a sculpture or even when it is a performance piece.

I think when I was younger, studying the writing of John Cage and Alan Kaprow, both of them introduced me to this idea, even if it's very dramatized in Kaprow's work, maybe more than John Cage's. This kind of distance where you put things with no intent on the table for people to use and meaning comes from the use. Rather than preceding the description of the meaning and giving this intent as a restrictive use of the work.

 

Don't do it ! (Readymades of the 20th Century),
John Armleder, 1997-2000, Mixed media

 

Zen and meaning

JL: So then again, it's very open ended and there's another element that I pick up on, a Zen influence; maybe through John Cage?

JA: That's maybe through John cage. I remember many years ago in one of my early interviews in Flash Art with Jean Carlo Politi, the editor, and Helena Kontova came up to me and said "you've studied Zen, your a Zen practitioner, you're a Zen monk or something like that. (laughter) I said where did you get this?  It's true I was interested in this but no way was I a Zen monk; I'm just curious about it. For our occidental mind - what's fascinating in the Zen practice is the use of absurdity or nonsense. In a fairly different way from British poetry, which is also used in another way.(laughs) It opens doors then it's up to you to take care of it

JL: Asthetically, In your work, I see it in the way you present the work - your use of colour, your presentation of objects against a back drop. The way you use space, gravity and also the walls, simultaneously, has a Zen quality to it. It's so simple and so minimal, but yet with so much going on.

JA: Well I think there's an instant given with the image that it is about something and yet when you look at it, it can be about something else. That has something to do with a Zen koan. It's up to you to find a resolution for it. That resolution is not a meaning, it's just a process. So it's not an end point;  it's not saying once you know what it is about, you know about the work. Maybe you know something about you, or the world, or whatever. It's just a conduct. The next thing you can do is come up with an absolutely different reading of it.

 

 

JL: What about when you mentioned Zen Koans; is it intentional for you to make your work into a kind of riddle?

JA: Well there's a riddle quality, but that is almost given by an academic understanding of art in general where you avoid this riddle quality; where you come up with a very finished reading of works where one thing leads into another. But the truth is, the works is not like that. It's much more given for on it's own.  It's just there. The fact that there is more than one reading, there are clues because there is an overlap or a lot of my works are like pastries with many coats. Everything is overlaid like an overload of information. And no way hierarchical given this information. No information is more important than another.  So, of course, someone will say he's someone who is into the history of art. A lot of the art works have a referential quality, to this period - this form. On the other hand, this blend, this mix is not a definition of any kind. It just happens to be collaged in a way. Over spilled and that's something that really interests me. It's just that there is too much information for it to be sorted out.

I'm always very skeptical that if you do something and sort out the information in order to kill it; so it's there to produce more.  It only produces meaning if there's meanings. There's more than one. Once you have one meaning it's just one episode. Or one choice. Which is given by whatever is eaten before or by the person you have just met. The next moment, the exact same ingredients produce another meaning - I think that's important. I think art is a very privileged platform.

 

 

Dot paintings

JL;  You have been a major influence on many important artists. When did you start making your spot paintings?

JA: It's dot not spot, that's Damien Hirst. But anyway, spot or dot, it's obviously the same thing.  Well, I guess the big painting, with the regular grid - Disturbed or Not - goes back to the late '70s.  In the middle of the '70s I did a lot of works on paper where there were dots; and the first influence was basically a Picabia painting, which I sort of copied in a way.  So, it had to do with Picabia; and also another Russian artist Fairlady, so their also influenced by him and there's another artist I like called Larry Poons.  He did paintings at that time for absolutely different reasons based on optical effects, that he studied and looked at. His whole work evolved from that. But somehow his whole work went from dots to moving dots to layers of paint. In that case I started doing the pour paintings at almost the same time as the dots.

 

 

JL: In the 70s?

JA: Yes. The first pour paintings were done at exactly the same time. The purpose is very different from Larry Poons, but the effect is almost the same. So it shows a totally different strategy; put them together and it produces exactly the same image. Or you can have exactly the same strategy or the same purpose or same agenda and come up with works that are totally different.

JL: Do you feel more comfortable working with three dimensional sculpture or with paintings?

JA: I feel equally as comfortable working in any format. The truth is I see myself as a painter. I want to understand my activities from the beginning as with dealing with painting somehow. Even when it's three dimensional works or even when its sculpture in a traditional sense. Looking at the furniture sculpture very often, they're organized in a very frontal way. The construction, the formal definition of it is very two dimensional at the beginning. But again, when I walk around them, I see them, I always have a frontal view and see them as many works from different angles. I wouldn't go too deeply into that. It's a big issue, being a sculptor, painter, musician, writer, whatever. Of course, it brings up ways to be viewed, to have to go around them or to mediate them. But, it's only a secondary aspect of it, which ends up meaning  instead of painting, it could writing or a poem which I don't do.

 

 

Working process

JL: Can you please tell me about your working process.  I read that you make a lot of your work on site and that you don't have a conventional studio. Is that correct?

JA: Yes that's correct. It's out of being lazy and not getting organized and also late for most projects, that I would not probably have them finished in time to have them packed and sent. (laughter) I'm also finding it easier to pack them myself and get there to do the pieces. It probably does have an influence on the pieces  and on the process but especially on how the pieces would look.  I don't think it's fundamental in the sense that it doesn't mean that my works are reportage about the sites. A lot of people say, which is true, if I do a furniture piece and I find a piece of furniture wherever I am, it's going to be different if I do the piece in Vienna, or in Sydney because you find different things. But, that's an anecdotal added value if you want. It's not deeply meaningful.

I had a studio for years in the 70s. I lived in it as a matter of fact. Then I lost it and since then I have never had a studio, or if I had one for a long time, like the one in New York, it was basically for storage. I never worked in there.  I mess up the places where I work with all sorts of stuff (laughter) so I end up having to work somewhere else.

But then again, it's like the world is a studio and I use the galleries where I show a week or two before.

JL: So, would that mean you would have to plan out the pieces in your head?  Do you make drawings, take photographs or have a precise idea of what you are going to do or do you leave it to the last minute?

JA:  Well there's technical problems and it depends on which piece you are talking about. If I am going to be doing a big neon wall, obviously, there's a lot of design; because there are objects which are produced by someone else - not me, which need information about the design or whatever. In some cases, I work with an assistant or a fabricator. I give them a lot of freedom to come up with their own ideas. I say yes yes yes and listen, because I want to be surprised by the piece. The same way when I do a show and I know I have to do paintings for a show, I usually, if it's in a place  where I don't know if I'm getting the materials; I say, oh yes, get me five canvases of this size. And  I try to figure out where I can find the paints to do it. Very often I do dot paintings and most dot paintings I do them by hand. A lot of times I do a pour painting, which makes a huge mess which is another kind of problem. There's a lot of openness and flexibility to do the production.  There are sketches, but I do those once the work is already completed. The sketches I do afterwards. (laughs)

JL:  (Laughs) Really? It's the reverse process.

JA: Exactly.

JL: And then you photograph the work?

JA: Yes. 

 

John-Armleder-and-Gerold-Miller

 

JL: That's really interesting. What I pick up from listening to you is that there is this strong element of chance.

JA: Yes, there is chance. There is randomness and there is accidents, incidence, and all of that is part of the whole process. The fact is, thus is my inner belief however you program things, the program is dependent on a chance issue anyway in one form or another. That fact that you are going to suddenly go and to decide in a very stiff way that you want to do it this way or that way, is decided by something that is beyond you anyhow. There's no deep reason for doing a red painting, or if you end up with a red painting. It could be because someone wants you to do a red painting, it could be because a collector says, I have beautiful home and red would fit better. (laughs) It could also be that in the studio or the place you are working, there is only red paint available. I think I mentioned that years ago when I still had a studio, I would make a plan for a painting that would be of this or that colour and I would stop working and find out I didn't have that colour. It would be night and I would have no shop to go into and buy it. So, I would use the colour I have so the red painting would turn out yellow. It's even better because the red painting you have  already done in your mind. Then you do another painting which is the yellow one. Two paintings in one.

 

 

Experimentation

JL: How important do you think it is for an artist to keep experimenting with new materials and ideas? I know you get a lot of artists that work on one thing and stick to it their whole life.

JA: Well, I think that if you stick to the same thing - you're still experimenting because you do a thing and you do it again and it is a totally different experience. So the second doing of the same thing is not the first one. It's fundamentally different. On the other hand, myself, I would be too bored or too lazy and I would probably be a bit annoyed by the perfection that you could sort of get close too.  Because if you do a thing again and again you do it better. But better is not more interesting. So that's not something which is close to my interests or my feelings or aesthetics. So that is probably why whatever I do, is like the first time I have ever done it. Even if it's the same modal or if it seems to be the same system. A dot painting, then again another dot painting. It's a continuation. As a matter of fact, I don't see it at all like that. That's why on the other hand I never believe that I'm inventing anything or producing an art work which is, when you talk about influential and things like that, well, just take a dot painting. The dot paintings I started doing as a ripoff of a Picabia drawing and I thought that is interesting, I can use it for other kind of issues in painting which have nothing to do with the concept of Picabia. It then ended up looking like issues that were interesting for an artist like Larry Poons. But if you look at how people looked at my work, at one point I was already involved in geometric abstraction. Especially in the period when I had the supremacist paintings. At one point, my work got very poplar for a very specific period. People said oh he's the guy that does dots.  I was painstakingly saying there were a lot of important artists around before me that were doing very interesting dot paintings and there are still young ones doing them now.  A couple of years later when my work was not so much in view, people would suddenly see a dot painting of mine and say oh but your doing a painting like Damien Hirst. (Laughter)

JL: That's funny. (laughs)

JA:  And I always say I'm trying my best, yes because Damien Hirst's paintings are very nice and I would love to paint as interesting as his. I think it's true. Of course there is a riddle to that. But on the other hand, it's true what when you do something and it turns out that someone else has done it before, or later, and you have knowledge about it, then your thing is about that. I think that the works by Damien Hirst or other artists would look like, in a superficial way, like some of mine. Adds to the scope of my work; it works both ways and in everyway.

JL: It works for him too.

JA: Probably yes. He probably doesn't care about it. I think his work performs something that I would have never been able to perform in my work, because he has a different agenda, and strategy; a different platform and his work is about something else. So my work has now incorporated this geography.

 

 

JL: It's really interesting. Is this the first dot painting on the table?

JA: Yes. This painting on the furniture sculpture. Yes that's the original drawing, which was a work on paper which was absolutely a pick on a Picabia drawing.

JL: This one was in 1980.

JA: Yes, this is a furniture sculpture, but I had the works on paper earlier than that and it really wasn't a quote but was inspired directly from a famous Picabcia.

JL; So you went from the dot drawings in the 70s to the furniture sculptures to the canvas?

JA: Yes back and forth. It's not that systematic.

JL: You said something really interesting earlier about your approach which seems to me very natural, very organic and not contrived at all. It seems very flexible. Something about your process seems very loose. Is that how you feel most comfortable in the process?

JA: Yes, absolutely; it's a natural attitude for me anyway. There's nothing constructed about it. I wouldn't want to serialize it in any other way. Again, as we were talking about it - it makes it all so difficult to define. Why my work has the kind of position it has is because it's also difficult to know what to do about it. I couldn't give a clue. I think it has to do with a bit of everything and a bit of nothing and it's a wonderful position to be in. It's complicated for people who have to deal with my work, like curators, or critics, or  art historians or dealers because there's no finished logo or title that sort of packs it up; then you can carry it to one place or another.

JL: Except for your name John Armleder. Your name probably sums it all up in itself. ( laughs)

JA: Sometimes it's not such an easy name to pronounce anyhow. (laughs)

 

 

Art world changes

JL: What do you see with what's going on in the art world these days?

JA:  I think the artwork follows one to one the general, context of society. It's never ahead of society, commenting on society, it's just what things happen.  So the context of course changes, politically, or sociologically and so on. So the art seems a little different - there's a French saying. ( please fill in the saying )

JL: Kind of like the more things change the more they stay the same.

JA: Yes it's true. If you look at the Whitney Biennale, for instance, or many other things - you see that there are a lot of strategies, like when we talked about Ecart in the beginning. This idea of autonomy for the work in the group to do anonymous things or to be independent. That is needed today also by a lot of young artists. But in the context, it is entirely different because now there are many artists. In my time it was different; there was a little group of people that were there to create a platform. Today, it's multiplied so much which makes it very challenging and very fascinating.

The biggest difference we have today from what I experienced when I was younger is the statistics. We had two big rooms or three big international art shows a year. It was like 10 museums showing contemporary ar, .25 galleries at the most in the world. So the context is very different now. Also, the big difference, because of that - you could very easily position yourself on the left side or the right side. Or on this position versus another one. Within society in general was an obvious situation. So in the 60s you could be against things, like we were, but today it's much more obscure. It's also challenging for very young people to define where they want to go. They have a way of dealing with it because I think language is slowly changing. I think the big challenge for younger people is that they use a lot of the language we use - in a time where language is obsolete.  So there is a sort of time delay between instruments for culture to adapt to a new situation. They are suing old tools. So we talk a lot about news tools like the internet but in a way, they are not the new tools. The new tools are language in a deeper sense. That language is not shared in a very clear way because also maybe there are too many people so there is no agreement. This also has to do with an overload of information, because this overload produces a kind of chemical mix and expectation. On the other, we just don't know how to handle it. Whether it's hot soap or cake. It's a very exciting moment; it's a challenge we didn't have when we were younger. But it is a very tough one, also, because I think young people have to deal with something which is much more complex.

 

 

Neutrality

JL: Something also came to mind speaking with you and that is a kind of neutral Asian philosophy?

JA: Maybe it has to do with this neutral way of talking about it. I'm a total believer. If you tell me that aliens are on top of the roof, I will say of course they are. And it's the same way for most things. Even if I'm partisan against any kind of military system, or if I have a political agenda, I'm open but I still have a point of view. On the one hand, I would never consider activities like art, that is one good way. There is not one path. Each interesting path or each real path is a combination of many paths. So that brings you to this idea that looks like an Asian philosophy.

The neutral thing is sort of complicated because after all, I'm Swiss.  So when you talk about neutrality, you have second thoughts about it.(laughs)

JL: (laughs) Yes, I forgot about that.

 

 

JA: The neutrality seems like a sweet idea, but sort of a strategy in order to never lose or get the best part from both sides which could be some way good. On the other hand it seems very optimistic. So it's true maybe being extremely optimistic in a non-moral way; something I agree with because I don't believe at all in any kind of exclusive moral construction in culture in general and probably in society also. I think in a more pragmatic way. Being read possibly in a moral way. Since I don't believe in where I see - where some people are privileged - where others are under privileged, because I think it's mechanically wrong. Or where I see fights that end up making a disaster; like any kind of war is mechanically wrong. That doesn't say that everything works in a paradise. It goes back to John Cage who loves mushrooms and on the other hand like randomness. When he was invited to Japan, someone kept a mountain for him, in order to look for mushrooms.......
but at one point there is mushrooms I won't eat

JL: What else are you working on besides the shows in New York?

JA: Well, I never know what I'm exactly working on or not. The shows in New York are almost over.  I just produced a painting for Bob Nikas.

JL: At Paula Cooper?

JA: Yes, and the main big show s coming up are the ICA in Philadelphia, which is a reconstruction of a show that I had at the Kunstale in Zurich a year and half ago, which is works on paper from the 60s - which is hundreds of different works. Very often when I stage the works from different periods together in a space, it builds another work.