Michael Asher: Kunsthalle Bern, 1992

Michael Asher (born in 1943), one of the foremost installation artists of theConceptual art period, is a founder of site-specific practice. Considered a progenitor ofinstitutional critique, he spearheaded the creation of artworks imbued with a self-consciousawareness of their dependence on the conditions of their exhibition context.

Inthe work Kunsthalle Bern 1992, Asher removed the radiators from all the museum'sexhibition spaces and reassembled them in its entryway gallery. Metal pipes connected the relocatedradiators to their original sockets; these tubular conduits, coursing in linear fashion along theKunsthalle's walls, kept the steam heat flowing and endowed the installation with directional linesof force. This "displacement of givens" offers a perfect example of site-specificpractice, one that took the gallery space and the institution itself as its subject. In thisdetailed examination of Kunsthalle Bern 1992, Anne Rorimer considers the work inthe context of Asher's ongoing desire to fuse art with the material, economic, and social conditionsof institutional presentation. Rorimer analyzes Kunsthalle Bern 1992 in relationto the earlier innovations of such minimalist artists as Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, SolLeWitt, Bruce Nauman, and Dan Flavin as well as to such conceptualist contemporaries as DanielBuren, Dan Graham, and Maria Nordman. She also considers the installation in the context of otherworks by Asher that have used non-art, functional elements, including walls, or that haveinvestigated museological issues.