The prodigious and protean production of Michael Asher has developed and continues to evolve in critical response to its own definition as art, which perforce is situated within a physical context as well as an economic, social, political, and historical one. Since the late 1960s, Asher has continuously explored methods to engage each work with the relevant aspects of its provided context. In doing so, he frees each resulting work from the conditions that he chooses to investigate. Asher was one of the first artists to give meaning to the term 'site-specific' and for the last thirty years has rigorously adhered to the demands of complying with the work's place of exhibition. Asher's exhibition in the beginning months of 1990 at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago - a space on the grounds of the University established earlier in the century for the display of recent art - offers a prime example of his aesthetic approach while ushering the artist's career into yet another decade of activity.

A work by Asher assumes form and content when aspects of its architectural and institutional context are examined critically and revealed within its own parameters. His exhibition at the Renaissance Society coincided with the 100-year anniversary of the founding of Hull House in Chicago and with the 200-year anniversary of the Patent Office of the United States Government. These two anniversaries relate to the two major components of the work: firstly, to the ideology underlying the American Arts and Crafts movement at the turn of the century through excerpted texts of the period and, secondly, to the patent numbers of mechanical fixtures and hardware that are a