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JOHN ARMLEDER: I’ve actually always liked it when my work is included in some new movement, even if the label is restrictive and even if the movement itself is just a fad, because the claim makes the work change. Not physically, of course—but the understanding of it, for me as well as for others. Whenever that happens, a new horizon suddenly opens up—I find myself in a situation I never would have sought on my own. If there were no one to feed on what I do and effect these kinds of unexpected changes, it would all become very sterile to me. It’s a dynamic process: From one moment, one context, one milieu to another, everything shifts.

That said, though I may like it when people see my art in such disparate ways, I don’t dwell on it. I have never spent much time considering what other people think about my work, because I myself don’t quite know what I think about it, and whatever it is I think about it changes over time. Most important, I’ve never believed that what I think about my own work has anything to do with the work itself. An artwork’s success, in a way, depends on its capacity to co-opt an existing situation and to be co-opted in return. I’m therefore quite happy to see people re-create my work for their own use and to adapt it to their own frames of reference.
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Fabrice Stroun: TO BE DETERMINED: AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN ARMLEDER; In: Artforum International Magazine, New York, April 2011, Vol.49, No.8 https://www.artforum.com/print/201104/to-be-determined-an-interview-with-john-armleder-27826 (31.08.2021)

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Armleder hat die Kunst selbst zu seinem Thema gemacht. Er beschäftigt sich auf ironisch-subtile Art in Bildern, Objekten, Installationen und Ausstellungen mit den die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts prägenden Konventionen. Nonchalant dekonstruiert und paraphrasiert er deren Dogmen, und unterzieht sie einer subersiv-analytischen Revision. Dabei schafft er eigene und unkonventionelle Formulierungen. Armleder agiert als Störer, der die Mechanismen der Kunst im Laufe seiner langjährigen Praxis durchschaut hat. Aus dieser Kenntnis heraus demontiert er sie und spielt mit ihr. Armleders Engagement als Kunstvermittler hat ihn zu einer Integrationsfigur für die nationale und internationale zeitgenössische Kunst avancieren lassen.
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Text is only available in German. https://www.kehrerverlag.com/de/john-m-armleder (30.09.2021)