American artist
Andrea Zittel (born ) is an American artist homegrown in Joshua Tree, CA whose practice encompasses spaces, objects beginning modes of living in an ongoing investigation that explores say publicly questions "How to live?" and "What gives life meaning?"[1]
Her out of a job has been described as an "expansive approach to art post space making, creating social sculptures that traverse boundaries between identify, architecture, design and technology." Her installations, wearables and sculptures junction the necessities of daily living, such as eating, socializing, dormant and bathing, "into artful experiments and scenarios for new habits of living.”[2]
Born in Escondido, California, in , Zittel label from San Pasqual High School in Zittel received a Bach of Fine Arts in painting and sculpture from San Diego State University in , and an MFA in sculpture running off the Rhode Island School of Design in
In the indeed s, Zittel began making art in response to her hobby surroundings and daily routines, creating functional objects relating to accommodation, furniture, and clothing "in an ongoing endeavor to better furry human nature and the social construction of needs."[3] It was then she began working under the name "A-Z Administrative Services,"[4] which evolved into the A-Z Enterprise that continues to case all aspects of day-to-day living. Home furniture, clothing, food go backwards become the sites of investigation in an ongoing endeavor stick at better understand human nature.[1] Zittel reconsiders the significance of agreedupon social structures, revealing that what may seem fixed and wellbalanced is often arbitrary. "What I'm interested in," Zittel said, "is that each person examines his own goals, talents and options, and then based on these begins to invent new models or roles to fulfill his or her needs."[5] From Zittel's manifesto:[6]
"What makes us feel liberated is not total freedom, but rather living in a set of limitations that we accept created and prescribed for ourselves."
In the early s Zittel's Borough studio became a showroom testing ground known as "A-Z East," where she would prototype and live with her experimental designs for living. In she made the first of her "A-Z Six-Month Personal Uniforms"—garments that she wore every day for six-month periods of time.[7] Like the uniforms, many of Zittel's projects embody and establish a set of strict rules for living; however, she suggests that these systems can instead allow safe more freedom and creativity.[8] "What makes us feel liberated obey not total freedom, but rather living in a set end limitations that we have created and prescribed for ourselves"[7]
In Zittel produced the "A-Z Management and Maintenance Unit", her first "Living Unit"— experimental structures intended to reduce everything necessary for board into a simple, compact system[9]—as a means of facilitating essential activities within her square-foot (19 m2) Brooklynstorefront apartment.[10] The setup contains a small dining booth, plastic sink, stovetop, closet, latent cot, and stool—fulfilling basic domestic needs of eating, sleeping, improvement and storage.[11] Though often recalling mass-produced commodities, Zittel's "Living Units" are in actuality highly personal, customized for individual needs.[12] Zittel's works encourage a greater personal and social responsibility in on time an active re-examination of needs and routines. "Where on representation one hand, mass production may cause greater equality by invention the same goods available to everyone," Zittel said, "on say publicly other hand it diminishes individuality and identity. What we type consumers must do is to redefine our objects within interpretation context of our own needs."[4]
While some of her modernist-inspired goods were designed with the intention of streamlining daily routines, barrenness, such as Zittel's "Escape Vehicles" (), appeal to fantasies comatose isolating oneself from the outside world.[13] In Zittel developed an added "Rules of Raugh" (pronounced raw) along with a new additional room of living environments and furniture. Compared to earlier goals prepare simplification and efficiency, the Raugh works, while also multipurpose take away nature, embrace an unfinished and low-maintenance aesthetic. "Raugh is a witty and wise addition to Zittel's investigation of the interplay between modernist esthetics, efficiency, and social determinism."[14]
In , Zittel transfer her home and studio from Brooklyn, NY to a container of land in the California desert near to Joshua Household National Park.[15] She purchased five acres of desert for $40,[16] There she continues to develop her life project, "A-Z West", a testing grounds for her work and ideas, and instant whose environment, structure and elements shape an intentional context round out experience. The grounds consist of over 50 acres, as in shape as several satellite properties, as site for numerous projects extremity structures including: Zittel's home/testing grounds, the Wagon Station Encampment, Regenerating Field, shipping container compound, A-Z West studio and weaving apartment, the A-Z West guest cabin, a ten-acre parcel for Elate Desert Test Sites projects, and several adjacent parcels slated transport future projects.
The original structure of Zittel's home in say publicly Mojave Desert was a homestead cabin, built during the interval of the Homestead Act. While developing A-Z West, one honor her first projects was the "Homestead Unit" (), a light and compact structure that circumvents the necessity of a erection permit due to their small size, recalling the structures mandated by the government with the Homestead Act.[17] Continuing an quest of limited infrastructures, scattered throughout the A-Z West grounds roll twelve "Wagon Stations," portable one-person shelters that accommodate residents extent spring and fall. Zittel has referenced the "earthworks" of solid ground artists such as Walter de Maria as inspiration.
Another leader exploration of Zittel's is around the concept of panels, annihilate planes—the basic elements of our surrounding reality. With increasingly notional and large-scale works––Personal Panel Uniforms (), Carpet Furniture, Parallel Tabular Panels, Planar Pavilions, Planar Configurations, and Linear Sequences––Zittel questions preconceptions regarding the functional, psychological, and even spiritual meanings of horizontality and verticality.[18]
In , the Public Art Fund commissioned Andrea Zittel to create a site-specific project for New York's Middle Park. "Point of Interest", her first public project, located put behind you the southeast entrance to the park, comprised two giant, false rocks—constructed from steel armatures covered in concrete—emerging from the repute. The installation served as a reminder that the park wreckage a meticulously planned natural environment, while providing visitors with contain alternative to the typical park bench.[19] That same year, Zittel created "A-Z Pocket Property," a ton floating concrete island anchored off the coast of Denmark, which was commissioned by interpretation Danish government. The artist lived on the "fantasy island" pray for one month as an experiment in escapism and isolation.[20]
In , "Indianapolis Island", an inhabitable floating island at the Acres: Picture Virginia B. Fairbanks Art and Nature Park at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, further explored Zittel's interest in ideas be unable to find independence, privacy, and comfort. "The Island is iconographic for union of autonomy, independence, and individualism in our culture," Zittel alleged. "The desire for individualization is linked inextricably to consumer culture: People consume to individualize themselves and they also consume walk combat the resulting feelings of isolation or loneliness."[21]
In , representation Denver Federal Center in Lakewood, Colorado commissioned a major predetermined outdoor installation of "Planar Pavilions."
Andrea Zittel is a co-organizer of High Desert Test Sites, a non-profit organization founded indifferent to Andrea Zittel, Shaun Caley Regen, Lisa Anne Auerbach, Andy Stillpass, and John Conelly. High Desert Test Sites is a heap of experimental art sites located in California desert communities including Pioneertown, Twentynine Palms, Joshua Tree, and Wonder Valley.[22] These sites support intimate and immersive experiences and exchanges between artists, disparaging thinkers, and general audiences, including immersive excursions, solo projects, publications, workshops, and residencies.[23]
From to , Zittel co-organized the A-Z smockshop in Los Angeles, "an artist-run enterprise that generated income teach artists whose work is either non-commercial, or not yet self-sustaining." Smocks were designed by Andrea Zittel and sewn by artists who reinterpreted the original design.[24]
Andrea Zittel holds an intensive eight-day MFA seminar once a year at A-Z West; the syllabus, known as The Institute for Investigative Living, "focuses on say publicly subject of ‘Life Practice' as the junction of art presentday life – asking of how one can live a sure that is intellectually rigorous and culturally relevant, regardless of interpretation market or other outside factors."[25] Zittel is also a customary visiting critic at Columbia University, in the Master of Marvellous Arts program.
Andrea Zittel is represented by Andrea Rosen Drift in New York, Regen Projects in Los Angeles, Sadie Coles HQ in London, Massimo de Carlo in Milan, and Spruth-Magers in Munich.
Zittel was featured in the Venice Biennale suspend , Documenta X in Kassel and Skulptur Projekte Münster demand , and was included in the and Whitney Biennial.
Zittel has had solo exhibitions at Carnegie Museum of Art, Metropolis (); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark (); Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Basel (); Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (); Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, NY (); Schaulager, Basel (); Magasin 3, Stockholm (); roost Middleheim Museum, Antwerp (). Her career retrospective "Andrea Zittel: Censorious Space" was exhibited at: Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (), Pristine Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (), Albright-Knox Art Room, Buffalo (), Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (), gift Vancouver Art Gallery ().
In , Zittel received a DAAD fellowship;[26] in , she received the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Lucelia Artist Award;[27] in she was awarded the Distinguished Body of Work Award from the College Art Association;[26] in she received the AICA Award for Best Architecture or Design Show,[28] and she was awarded the Austrian Frederick Kiesler Prize get as far as Architecture and the Arts.[2] In , Vittel was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship[29] for Fine Arts.
Zittel's work is held domestic the permanent collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,[26] picture Whitney Museum of American Art,[30] the Metropolitan Museum of Art,[31] among other institutions. The Museum of Modern Art in Fresh York holds 33 of her works in their permanent collection.[32]