Reception: Andrea Zittel

Andrea Zittel: An Institute of Investigative Living
Curated by Elizabeth Chodos
Jan 25–Mar 8, 2020

Jan 24, 6-8pm: Reception

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Miller ICA is opening a solo exhibition of new and existing work by Andrea Zittel from January 24th-March 8th. 

Andrea Zittel’s work rests at the intersection of art, architecture, and design. A world-builder, Zittel’s practice manifests within her live/work residence A-Z West– an artwork and homestead located on over seventy acres in the California high desert next to Joshua Tree National Park. Since its inception A-Z West has functioned as an evolving testing grounds for living—a place in which spaces, objects, and acts of living all intertwine into a single ongoing investigation into what it means to exist and participate in our culture today. “How to live?” and “What gives life meaning?” are core issues in both Zittel’s personal life and artistic practice. Answering these questions has entailed exploring complex relationships between our need for freedom, security, autonomy, authority, and control—observing how structure and limitations often have the capacity to generate feelings of freedom beyond open-ended choices. This exhibition surveys work spanning many years, and a wide range of media including furniture, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, painting, and two newly commissioned room-sized patterned tile-floors. The exhibition demonstrates the immersive gestalt of Zittel’s all encompassing practice where every material aspect of daily life is examined and her ethos for living guides all action. 

About the Artist

Andrea Zittel was born in 1965 in Escondido California. She received her BFA in painting and sculpture (1988) from San Diego State University, and MFA (1990) in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design. In the early 1990s she first established her practice in New York. One of her most visible projects in NY was A-Z East, a small row house in Brooklyn turned into a showroom or testing grounds for her prototypes for living. In 1998 she moved back to the west coast, eventually settling in the High Desert region next to Joshua Tree National Park where she founded A-Z West in 2000. A-Z West is the current site of her studio practice, as well as other living experiments including the Wagon Station Encampment and the Institute of Investigative Living. In 2002 Zittel cofounded High Desert Test Sites, a series of experimental art sites in the High Desert that supports works by both emerging and established artists.