ABOUT

Absurd Thinking Between Art and Design is survey of work by the architect-artist Allan Wexler. The book features projects developed across the artist’s forty-year career that mediate the gap between fine and applied art using the mediums of architecture, sculpture, photography, painting, and drawing.  Allan’s production can be broadly described as tactile poetry that is composed by re-framing the ordinary with intent to sustain a narrative about landscape, nature, and the built environment that highlights the intriguing and surprising characteristics latent in the elements and rituals which pervade daily life.  Wexler’s work is sometimes functional – tangible and tactical – sometimes theoretical, and often a hybrid of the two. In all cases, it demonstrates a commitment to re-evaluating basic assumptions about the human relationship to the built and natural environments. Organized thematically across four categories—Public Spaces, Private Spaces, Landscape, and Abstraction— Absurd Thinking Between Art and Design is a richly illustrated cross-section of Wexler’s multi-scale, multi-media work featuring his own writings, narratives and reflections, and critical contributions by Patricia Phillips, Dean of Graduate Studies, Rhode Island School of Design, and Sean Anderson, Associate Curator of Architecture and Design, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Allan’s compelling thought processes unfold across each thematic category revealing a curious, comedic, analytical mind certain to instigate creative thought among designers and artists, and offer new strategies for examining the inhabited environment.

by Allan Wexler in collaboration with Ellen Wexler

edited by Ashley Simone

Lars Muller Publishers