25.4 x 25.4 cm each
Tony Feher’s (b. 1956 Albuquerque, NM, d. 2016 New York, NY) unique ability to embrace the significance and potential in the most humble and simple processes was a cornerstone of his formal practice. He was a sculptor who saw beauty, emotional strength, and value in non-precious materials.
Over a career spanning more than thirty years, Feher’s unique body of work recasts the utilitarian and familiar into sculptures both elegant and ambiguous in their perceived simplicity. His materials often included found items and common detritus, including bottles, containers, and glasses; empty vessels that served their immediate function, and are subsequently discarded. In careful arrangements, Feher foregrounds the aesthetic properties of these objects - color, shape, mass - against their physical disposability. The results are installations both vulnerable and poetic in their presentation, contemplating the endurance of form against the transience of meaning.
An in-depth retrospective of Feher’s work was organized by Claudia Schmuckli and presented at the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa, in 2012. The exhibition traveled to the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, Texas; the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts; the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; and Akron Art Museum, Ohio. A fully illustrated monograph was published by Gregory R. Miller & Co. to accompany the survey.
Feher has received awards including the Aspen Award for Art, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen and The Alpert Award for Ucross Residency Prize Winner for Visual Arts, amongst others.
His work is in the collections of The Addison Gallery of American Art; Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Akron Art Museum; The Art Institute of Chicago; The Baltimore Museum of Art; Dallas Museum of Art; Des Moines Art Center; Hammer Museum; The Henry Art Gallery; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University; Indianapolis Museum of Art; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; La Colécion Jumex; The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Old Jail Art Center; Ruby City, San Antonio; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; San Jose Museum of Art; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; The Walker Art Center; The Whitney Museum of American Art; and Worcester Art Museum; amongst others.
