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.