John Armleder

Collection of the artist, Switzerland

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Collection de l'artiste, Suisse

In the Pour Paintings, Armleder allows paint—often mixed with glitter and other materials—to stream down the faces of his canvases, where it accumulates in overlapping veils of color and texture. The work included here is rare, a medium-dyptich-format example of this typology. It has the paradoxical effect of expanding its range, as Armleder has often turned to pouring processes when producing large, installation-based paintings. At this scale, the Pour Painting call to mind more intimate landscapes and tableaux, with quasi-narrative relationships between forms and colors that obscure, reveal, and blend into one another. The textural delights of the glitter, which bring attention to the work’s surface, accentuate the surprising sense of depth that emerges from Armleder’s aleatory compositions, and serve as a reminder that chance is devoid of neither consciousness nor humor. In fact, the Pour Paintings make plain that what we see is always dependent on the randomness of the encounter between our eyes, our minds, and the changing conditions of the world.