JOHN M ARMLEDER, Untitled, 1968
There are many ways of looking at the world, it must be said again, here. When John Armleder at the age of about 18 heard from composer John Cage that silence is also music, a door opened with a huge bang. He never recovered from that. This insight never left him for the rest of his life. In interviews he repeatedly mentions John Cage as one of the reference points for his way of looking and thinking.
In 1984 I had agreed with John at the main train station in Basel to talk with him about a possible exhibition at my gallery. He agreed and when he first visited me years later in Amsterdam in 1988 to make a solo exhibition in Galerie van Gelder on the spot, he arrived with a roll of drawings under his arm. One of the drawings was a sheet of paper with two arc lines, some wrinkles, spots and fold lines and one corner of the paper was missing. If I liked to have the drawings framed, I could do so. I didn't have that money and so the drawings disappeared into a drawer after setting up.
You may consider something as nothing like this drawing. You can also (try to) see something that is nothing as more than nothing. Here John Armleder challenges you to do so, I think. An iconic work, also because of the richness of nothingness that can be found on it. KvG