Remembering Michael Asher at the Art Institute of Chicago, 1982

Abstract

The groundbreaking career of Michael Asher, in all of its visual and conceptual diversity, following his death in October 2012, will have to be studied and remembered henceforth by means of published and unpublished documentation. Permanent works by Asher are few, and the installations he realized over a period of more than four decades were, with the occasional fortuitous exception, mainly conceived for temporary exhibitions. In all practicality and in light of ever-shifting institutional circumstances, it is difficult to foresee any re-creation of these exhibitions. Because of each work's attention to and interconnection with the specific circumstances of its site at any one time, the reconstruction of an exhibition remains unlikely.