Tony Tasset
Tony Tasset, Artists Monument, 2014. Etched acrylic mounted on steel and wood. Collection of the artist; courtesy Kavi Gupta, Chicago
Born 1960 in Cincinnati, OH
Lives and Works in Chicago, IL
For the 2014 Whitney Biennial, artist Tony Tasset has chosen to take his work outside of the Museum’s galleries and present it in Hudson River Park, near the Museum’s future home at Washington and Gansevoort Streets. The multicolored acrylic panels that adorn Tasset’s Artists Monument are etched with the names of 392,486 modern and contemporary artists, ranging from Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol to emerging artists with a single exhibition to their credit. By building this pointedly horizontal monument in public space, with the artists’ names listed alphabetically and the colors arranged randomly, Tasset symbolically flattens the hierarchies that exist between lauded and unknown artists and instead celebrates the entire community. Artists Monument is in part a playful response to the perceived exclusivity of art world exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial.
On View
Off-Site: Hudson River Park
Tony Tasset’s work is on view in Hudson River Park, 17th Street between Chelsea Piers and Pier 57.
In the News
"Irrepressibly colorful and resolutely abstract, Tasset’s The Artists Monument looks nothing like your conventional monument. It is 80 feet long and eight feet tall, and made up entirely of bold acrylic panels on which the names of 392,485 artists have been etched."
—Artnet
