Image: “Two Too Large Tables”, in collaboration with Ellen Wexler, Hudson River Park, NYC, 2006
On the Art of Building in Ten Books
The Glass Corner (Room 205), 25 East 13th Street, 2nd Floor
September 12, 2013 at 6:15pm
Wexler’s work explores the relationship between human activity and the built environment. He makes buildings, furniture, vessels and utensils to act as backdrops and props for everyday human activity. The works isolate and elevate daily rituals: eating, sleeping, and bathing. They, in turn, become mechanisms that generate ritual, ceremony and movement, turning the ordinary into theater. By evoking human domestic needs and questioning the role that objects play in our interaction with one another, Wexler’s handcrafted drawings, multimedia objects, images, and public installations help us perceive art’s place and purpose in new ways. Wexler has been honored with the Chrysler Award for Design Innovation (1997), the George Nelson Design Award (1999), the Rome Prize Fellowship (2004-2005), and, more recently, with The Henry J. Leir Prize for outstanding work in exhibition, for Gardening Sukkah: Reinventing Ritual, Jewish Museum New York (2009). The most recent publication about his work is Custom Built: A Twenty Year Survey of Work by Allan Wexler, Introduction by Aaron Betsky, Atlanta College of Art, 1999. He has lectured and taught widely. He is a professor at the School of Constructed Environments, Parsons The New School for Design.
