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Richard Artschwager

Question Mark (2001)

Photo lithograph

49 x 38.5 cms

Edition of 175

Hand signed and numbered by the artist

 

One of the key artistic figures of post-war American art, in 1996 Artschwager began constructing the first of a long series of sculptures that repeatedly reproduced several punctuation signs from written language. This limited edition depicts the question mark, but entirely removed from it's context as piece of punctuation. Hovering alone on the paper, the mark has been transformed into a physical object, a hairy form - with a shadow! Artschwager's piece combines elements of surrealism, pop and conceptual art with a light-hearted wit, whilst maintaining the emotional and exclamatory weight of the question mark's original interrogative purpose.

Artschwager's exhibition at the Serpentine in 2001 included pieces from his early furniture-like objects and marble-effect Formica pieces of the 1960s, to his seminal blps – black lozenge-shaped objects that often appear in surprising places – to more painterly images on textured surfaces.

 

Richard Artschwager

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Richard Artschwager (born in 1923 in Washington, DC) passed away in 2013 in Albany, New York. After receiving a BA in 1948 from Cornell University, New York, he studied under Amédée Ozenfant, one of the pioneers of abstraction. In the early 1950s Artschwager became involved in cabinetmaking, producing simple pieces of furniture. After a ruinous workshop fire at the end of the decade, he began making sculpture using leftover industrial materials, then expanded into painting, drawing, site-specific installation, and photo-based work. 

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