Brought to Southern California in the mid ’70s to teach in place of Bas Jan Ader (UC Irvine) and later John Baldessari (CalArts), David Askevold became a key figure in the Southern California Conceptual art scene. Former student Tony Oursler recalls: “Askevold’s position in art history is mercurial, hard to pin down, but for me he is a missing link: a Conceptualist whose approach to light and language connects him, via Brion Gysin, to the previous generation. His influence is clear in the eclectic installation work of Jim Shaw and of Mike Kelley, who was also a student, friend, and collaborator; his approach to the spatial connectivity of ideas is a harbinger of the scatter works of Cady Noland; and I see echoes of Askevold in later generations, such as in the hermetic cosmology of Matthew Barney and Thomas Hirschhorn.” Source: “In the Weave of Reason: Tony Oursler and Mike Kelley on David Askevold,” Artforum, Summer 2008.