Tony Feher
Beginning in October 2005, Tony Feher, a New York-based artist who has been showing internationally since the early 1990s, exhibited a selection of recent work as well as a large installation created especially for the Arena. Feher is recognized for his wry and delicate sculptures mostly from found or disposable materials such as bottles, jars, crates, plastic containers, and many other kinds of multi-colored commercial debris. In the Arena, Feher suspended large bottles of orange soda in multiple rows and covered the windows of three Donald Judd-designed doors with blue painter’s tape. Over the course of the day, sunlight filtered through the high clerestory windows and the blue doors to illuminate successive rows of bottles, which glowed as though lit from within.
In the Ice Plant downtown, Feher installed two sculptures: one composed of stacks of silver-painted wooden crates; the other a large, wedge-shaped piece created from red plastic soft-drink cases. The two sculptures played off each other: the silver crates precarious and glimmering, the wedge hulking and unbudgeable. Feher also displayed work in an abandoned horse stable on museum grounds. Each room contained a selection of discrete multi-part works, variously made from suspended bottles, red and blue plastic filament, and cement molds cast from convenience-store drinking cups. Feher’s additions animated the rooms and the ruined state of the building in unexpected ways-creating a porous border between inside and outside and allowing the landscape to enter the installation and the installation to enter the landscape.
Tony Feher (1956–2016) was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Exhibitions include the 2012–2014 traveling survey Tony Feher (Des Moines Art Center; Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston; deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum; the Bronx Museum of the Arts; Akron Art Museum), PaceWildenstein (2008); Acme, Los Angeles, The Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, and the Indianapolis Museum of Modern Art (2007); Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco, California (2006); Transport to Summer, Fundacion La Caixa, Lleida, Spain (2004); Poetic Justice, 8th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey (2003); I’m Tired of Toast, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, California (2002); Tony Feher, Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (both 2001).