RICHARD FLEISCHNER

(AMERICAN, BORN 1944)

St. Louis Project, 1989
trees, shrubs, mortar, limestone, grass, clover
112 x 399 x 5100 inches
Loan courtesy of Citicorp

Specifically sited at this entry point to the Park, St. Louis Project is at once a barricade, hedge, gate, turnstile, terraced step and “drive-thru” monument. Measuring 425 feet long, the work consists of six stacked limestone elements spanning Laumeier’s access road into the neighboring business park. The artist’s intention was to create a visual and conceptual link between the properties by actively incorporating the passing vehicles. Resembling the mysterious Neolithic dwellings unearthed in sites such as Skara Brae, Scotland, and filtered through the precision of Brutalist urban concrete, each set of stone slab elements offers a sequence of carefully considered views. The artist has given meaning to this knoll, and through careful analysis of topography, presents a subtle critique on both the aesthetics and the permanence of our built environment.

St. Louis Project is part of Laumeier’s Ten Sites program, 1980–90. Ten Sites was a unique program that brought ten artists together with tradespeople from St. Louis County Parks for creative collaboration.

Sculpture Interaction Guideline: Sit, But Do Not Climb

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Richard Fleischner was born in New York in 1944. He received his B.F.A. and his M.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design. As a sculptor, painter, installation artist and furniture maker, Fleischner began working in and on the outdoors in the 1960s. His landscapes and large-scale public sculptures emphasize the relationship between man-made architecture and the natural world. Fleischner's environments have been constructed in numerous public and private sites, and his drawings and paintings are widely collected. His selected public collections include the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; the Dallas Museum of Art; the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Stuart Collection, the University of California, San Diego; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.