Geneva, Switzerland, 1948. He lives and works in Ginevra and New York.
John Armleder is a performance artist, sculptor, and painter, whose multi-faceted activities are connected by drawing. Affiliated with Fluxus in the late 1960s and 70s, the value of ephemerality and the notion that art is the conduction of creative energy are central to his work. Armleder's use of many different materials and found objects was demonstrated vividly in his 2006 exhibition at Tate Liverpool that incorporated a multitude of materials including televisions, scaffolding, mirrors, lights, CD players, animals, pot plants and Christmas trees, creating a riotous and magical world of disorientating beauty and mystery. Armleder frequently examines the context in which art is displayed and views the exhibition as a medium in its own right. He has questioned the notion of the authenticity of art with installations that united found objects (second-hand or new) with abstract paintings executed by Armleder himself, many of which ironically referred to previous modernist examples. He creates dialogues between disparate objects by placing them within an exhibition context, raising the question of possible equivalences that are created between them when viewed in such a setting. Several European museums made shows of his work, such as Martin Gropius Bau (Berlin 1991), il Deichtorhallen (Hamburg, 1993), l'Hong Kong Museum of Art (1995), il Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris e il Centre National d'Art Contemporain G. Pompidou, Beaubourg (Paris, 1996), il Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney, 2001) e lo Stedelijk Museum Bureau (Amsterdam, 2003).