Michael Ashkin

{{Short description|American artist}} '''Michael Ashkin''' is an American artist who makes sculptures, videos, photographs and installations depicting marginalized, desolate landscapes.<ref name=gabriel97>{{cite news |last1=Gabriel |first1=Trip |title=Trafficking in Toxic Waste and Human Loneliness |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/06/arts/trafficking-in-toxic-waste-and-human-loneliness.html |work=The New York Times |date=April 6, 1997}}</ref> He is a professor at Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning.<ref>{{cite web |title=Michael Ashkin |url=https://aap.cornell.edu/people/michael-ashkin |website=Cornell AAP |accessdate=4 October 2018}}</ref> Ashkin was a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow.<ref name=guggenheim>{{cite web |title=Michael Ashkin |url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/michael-ashkin/ |website=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation |accessdate=4 October 2018 |date=2009}}</ref>

Ashkin is best known for his use of miniature scale and modest materials.<ref name=cotter05>{{cite news |last1=Cotter |first1=Holland |title=Art in Review; Andrea Zittel -- Michael Ashkin |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/10/arts/art-in-review-andrea-zittel-michael-ashkin.html |work=The New York Times |date=June 10, 2005}}</ref> He had his first solo show in 1996, and his floor sculpture called ''No. 49,'' was included in the 1997 Whitney Biennial.<ref name=gabriel97/> His work has been featured at the Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York,<ref name=cotter00>{{cite news |last1=Cotter |first1=Holland |title=ART IN REVIEW; Michael Ashkin |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/25/arts/art-in-review-michael-ashkin.html |work=The New York Times |date=February 25, 2000}}</ref><ref name=cotter05/> the Renaissance Society in Chicago,<ref>{{cite web |title=Watery, Domestic |url=http://renaissancesociety.org/exhibitions/432/watery-domestic/ |publisher=The Renaissance Society |accessdate=4 October 2018 |date=November 17, 2002}}</ref> Vienna Secession,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.secession.at/en/exhibition/michael-ashkin-2/|title=Michael Ashkin « secession|website=www.secession.at|language=en-US|access-date=2018-10-25}}</ref> and in Documenta11 in Germany.<ref name=guggenheim/>

Ashkin authored ''Garden State'', a book which compares the New Jersey Meadowlands to a formal garden.<ref name=cotter00/> In 2014, A-Jump Books published Ashkin's ''Long Branch'' a book of photographs and text documenting the destruction of a New Jersey neighborhood <ref>{{cite news |last1=Shinkle |first1=Eugenie |title=Capitalism as a Bearer of the Uncanny: An Interview with Michael Ashkin |url=https://www.americansuburbx.com/2016/04/capitalism-as-a-bearer-of-the-uncanny-an-interview-with-michael-ashkin.html |work=American Suburb X |date=April 28, 2016}}</ref> and in 2018 TIS Books published a book of photographs from Berlin entitled ''Horizont''. Ashkin's ''were it not for'' was published in 2019 with FW:Books, and combines photographs of the Mojave desert with sentences that begin with the book's title. ''There will be two of you'' was published in 2024 by FW:Books<ref>https://collectordaily.com/michael-ashkin-there-will-be-two-of-you/</ref>

Ashkin was born in Morristown, New Jersey, the son of Arthur Ashkin, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist,<ref>{{cite web |last1=Fleischman |first1=Tom |title=Arthur Ashkin, Ph.D. '52, shares Nobel Prize in physics |url=https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2018/10/arthur-ashkin-phd-52-shares-nobel-prize-physics |publisher=Cornell Chronicle |date=October 2, 2018}}</ref> and the nephew of the physicist Julius Ashkin. Before returning to art school, Ashkin taught Arabic and received an M.A. in Middle East Languages from Columbia University, and supported himself as a computer programmer.<ref name=gabriel97 />

==References== {{reflist}}

==External links== * [http://www.michaelashkin.com Artist Official Website] * [https://aap.cornell.edu/people/michael-ashkin Cornell University profile] * [https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/michael-ashkin/ 2009 Guggenheim Foundation Profile]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ashkin, Michael}} Category:Living people Category:Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Category:Cornell University faculty Category:Artists from Morristown, New Jersey Category:Year of birth missing (living people)