A new exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) explores the work and legacy of pioneering conceptual artist and longtime CalArts faculty member Michael Asher (1943–2012), whose decades of teaching at the Institute shaped generations of artists.
On view through Sunday, Aug. 2 at MOCA Grand Avenue, Michael Asher presents a focused survey of the artist’s career through material elements, documentation, and an accompanying exhibition guide, reflecting a practice that often resisted traditional forms of display.
Over a career spanning six decades, Asher played a pivotal role in the development of conceptual art, creating works that made their surrounding context the active content of the work itself. His projects examined the often unseen social, economic, and institutional structures that shape how art is produced and experienced.
Because many of Asher’s works were produced for specific times and places, much of his work cannot be reconstituted. The exhibition instead draws on documentation, archival materials, and other resources from the artist’s archive, as well as loans from friends and peers, to trace the scope of his practice.
Asher lived his entire life in Los Angeles and maintained a long relationship with MOCA.
In press materials for the exhibition, Ann Goldstein, Interim Maurice Marciano Director of MOCA, stated: “Michael Asher’s work is inseparable from MOCA’s history and from the emergence and foundations of conceptual art in Los Angeles and beyond.”
At CalArts, where he taught for nearly four decades, Asher’s influence extended well beyond the classroom. His critique sessions (Post-Studio) became legendary for their duration and rigor, often stretching for hours as he pushed students to reconsider how art is made and understood. As noted in Asher’s Los Angeles Times obituary, these sessions could run from “10 a.m. to midnight.”
For further reading/listening:
