Much ink has been spilled in attempting to understand, explain, indeed to unlock the secret behind the decades-long career of John Armleder.


Often associated with artistic movements as varied – and sometimes contradictory - as Fluxus, neo-geo or relational art, Armleder’s career defies categorizations, which would inevitably fall short of defining his creative range. His work can perhaps best be understood as an ongoing reminder of the infinite forms that art can take, taking the form of “furniture sculptures”, of “pour paintings”, of neon lights or disco ball installations…

For this, John Armleder’s work is euphorically straightforward, and gloriously impossible to define – as the artist himself explains, “what you do is simply something that was bound to happen when you do it.”


Rather than assign meaning or prescribe an intention, Armleder leaves all doors open, for his work to speak for itself, or not speak at all, or say whatever the viewer wants it to say. The work is present, and its disarming clarity is the very the purpose of its existence.

For this second solo intervention at Pièce Unique, which again coincides with the Christmas holidays, we are presented with a rectangular off-white canvas featuring a single vertical slab of electric blue paint, paired with a synthetic Christmas tree, adorned with matching festive blue lights… laying on the floor.


Nothing about either element is particularly abnormal, yet the combination of both within the gallery space, and perhaps most intriguingly, the tree’s intentional position turns these familiar objects into something else. The questions, emotions, issues that this brings up is for each of us to interpret, to enjoy, and to revel into, all the way.