AUERBACH, Lisa Anne (Ann Arbor, 1967)Unicycle Shop

Lisa Anne Auerbach, born in 1967 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, graduated from the Art Center of Design in 1994. Auerbach is an artist best known for her knitting. Photography was the discipline she studied for her MFA, but, not having access to a darkroom, she used knitting as an inexpensive way to make art. His knitting patterns are often created digitally and with a knitting machine. ‘While Auerbach's slogans and signs are politically outspoken, his humour infuses the work with subtlety, awkwardness, mockery and self-mockery, sometimes all at once'.
His most significant project, the Body Count Mittens, consists of a series of gloves on which the image of a gun is produced with a date and number that corresponds to the American soldiers killed every day in Iraq. The instructions and pattern of the gloves, together with a website to check the daily number of American casualties, are publicly listed on a knitting forum, allowing the public to make their own pair of gloves.
His major exhibitions include: ‘Right On, Weatherman,' CPK Kunsthal, Copenhagen, 2006; “Take This Knitting Machine and Shove It,” Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, 2009; “Chicken Strikken,” Malmö Konsthall, Malmö, 2012; “Spells,” Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles, 2013; ‘Abstract America Today,‘ Saatchi Collection, London, 2014; “Parasophia, Kyoto International Festival of Culture,” Kyoto, 2015; Wasteland,' Mona Bismarck Center and Gallerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, 2016; ‘Psychic Art Advisor,' Frieze Los Angeles, Los Angeles, 2019

Unicycle Shop was open on May 12 and 13, 2007, as part of High Desert Test Sites in Joshua Tree, California. During two days of business, we rented unicycles to over 50 people for the price of ten cents per hour. Most of those renting unicycles were first-time unicyclists and they approached the challenge of unicycling with enthusiasm and vigor. Crashes into the soft sand were not uncommon. Some visitors became quite obsessed with unicycling. The sun beat down at 90 degrees, and unicyclists were covered in sweat and sand. Though Unicycle Shop was fully equipped with First Aid equipment and a certified First Air technician, the worst accident was a splinter unrelated to unicycling.