Michael Asher | the artist

The artist Michael Asher
Born 1943, Los Angeles, USA.
Lives and works in Los Angeles, .
Died Oct 14 2012, , .
Style and technique of the artist: Installation art, Conceptual Art, skulptur projekte munster, Whitney Biennial,

Michael Asher artworks on eBay

Bucksbaum Award 2010.
Asher’s work takes the form of “subtle yet deliberate interventions  additions, subtractions or alterations  in particular environments.” His work in the late 1960s and early 1970s consisted of dividing up gallery spaces using partition walls and curtains, and designing environments that reflected or absorbed sound. In the 1970s he began to remove elements from spaces, for example sandblasting away layers of paint or removing the partition walls separating an exhibition space from the gallery office. In 1979 he started to reposition objects in museum collections…wikipedia


The work of Michael Asher arises from the belief that no individual art object has a universal meaning, independent of its institutional context. Asher, and other prominent conceptual artists who emerged in the 1970s, believe that the spaces and practices of the museum or gallery-its methods of interpreting,publicizing , and displaying works of art- condition how we understand the art that is exhibited there…


Los Angeles conceptual artist, Michael Asher’s concerns are the infrastructural and intellectual foundation of art, and the physical spaces that serve as its termination and source. Asher has stated: “inspecting a gallery space and taking notes [is] an essential part of my method, since my work never consists of simply adding preconceived or completed objects for exhibition purposes.”

Asher participated in the 73rd and 74th American Exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, which took place in 1979 and 1982, respectively. For the 73rd American Exhibition, Asher relocated the bronze sculpture of Jean Antoine Houdon’s George Washington (1788)which had stood outside the main entrance of the Art Institute since 1925to a museum gallery. The sculpture was taken off its base and installed in the center of Gallery 219, then a period room dedicated to European painting, sculpture, and decorative arts of the 18th century, the historical context appropriate to George Washington…