The Swiss artist John Michael Armleder was born in Geneva in 1948. In 1966 he began his studies at the city’s École des Beaux-Arts and was involved in Fluxus actions. As an Action and Conceptual artist he has worked in various mediums. After taking part in a mixed-media course with John Epstein in England, he went on in 1969 to found the artists’ group Ecart (French: aberration, excess), from which the Galerie Ecart emerged. The group presented performances and happenings, and organised exhibitions with internationally known artists, among them Joseph Beuys, John Cage, Daniel Spoerri and Andy Warhol. Armleder’s first Furniture Sculpture, with which he took up the tradition of Marcel Duchamp, was produced in 1979. In his works he frequently does without a personal signature. A recurring theme is the engagement with avant-garde positions in art history, which he ironically dismantles by way of juxtapositions. Since 1994 he has held professorships at Braunschweig’s art academy (the Hochschule für bildende Künste) and the École Cantonale d’art de Lausanne. Having been awarded numerous prizes, Armleder is richly represented in museums and public collections and has been honoured with many solo exhibitions. He now lives in New York and Geneva.
