“They are otherworldly flawless. As if they had been generated by numbers, but the origin is like a glacial pebble, rolled, fondled, tumbled for hundreds of years until there is not a ripple.”
—Richard Artschwager
Artschwager's multiples offer visual and analytical contradictions, subversively engaging simultaneously with the vernaculars of Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptualism: the Pop derivation from utilitarian objects, the Minimal application of industrial materials, and the Conceptual impulse to engage with the ideological structures of language. Twisting established dichotomies of artistic and industrial production, Artschwager blurs the line between what is faux versus real, handmade versus manufactured, functional versus useless, and ordinary object versus high art.
