Michael Asher

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.” To prepare for this exhibition, Asher spent a year researching the University of Chicago’s renowned Department of Sociology, and the radical social agendas and remedies its professors prescribed in the first decade of the 20th century, many of which made aesthetics a central feature. He juxtaposes this material with information about the physical gallery space of the Renaissance Society, creating an installation that is specific to both the art space and its broader institutional setting.