FramingArK

Luca Frei + Piano / Rogers

2012-01-30T01:08:00.000+01:00

Untitled (Juggler)

Falke Pisano + Grey

2012-01-27T06:04:00.001+01:00

Screen (Parabolic Reflector), 2008. Wood, paint, mirror. Variable dimensions.

http://www.balicehertling.com/falkepisanoworks.html

Alexander Apóstol + Neutra

2012-01-11T02:51:00.001+01:00

Think Blue III
Fotografía Digital
Díptico, 55 x 155 cm
Trabajo comisionado por Los Angeles
Contemporary Editions, 2006

Sobre esta obra:
Durante la década de los ’50 el famoso arquitecto angelino Richard Neutra proyectó un complejo urbanístico para los habitantes del Chávez Revine. Estos provenían de México y era inmigrantes de bajos recursos, pero el proyecto estaba financiado por inversores privados. Estos se reunieron con los habitantes del sector y se organizaron para ir desalojando a medida que se construían las modernas viviendas para luego habitarlas. Todo ello ocurría en medio del ambiente anticomunista de la era McCarthy y sus seguidores, que rápidamente olieron en el proyecto tintes sospechosos. Los inversores decidieron cancelar el proyecto y se reutilizó inmediatamente el espacio para construir el stadium de Los Dodgers, no sin antes echar por la fuerza, utilizando tractores y policías, a los habitantes del sector negados a irse.
El suceso se silenció con la finalización de la construcción de stadium para el equipo estrella, institución muy respetada por los angelinos. El slogan de Los Dodgers, y que luce en enormes vallas frente al stadium, dice THINK BLUE.

http://alexanderapostol.com

José Dávila + Le Corbusier

2012-01-11T02:13:00.000+01:00

"Ville Savoie", 2011

Terence Gower + Mies van der Rohe

2012-01-11T02:09:00.000+01:00

"Seagram building", 2011

Tamar Guimaraes + Niemeyer

2012-01-11T02:04:00.000+01:00

Canoas (a film)
Tamar Guimaraes

Casa das Canoas is the house Oscar Niemeyer built for himself in the early 50s. Surrounded by remnants of the rainforest in the hills of the city of Rio de Janeiro the house floor plan appears to be a stage for sensuous display and erotic possibilities rather than a machine for living.

My intention is to research and produce a short 16mm film at the house in which the camera follows the preparations for a cocktail party - focusing on the servants, on the house maintenance and on the house itself.

Instead of housing for the masses, modernist architecture in Brazil was in most cases a luxury item for the wealthy, and the servants classes, an ubiquitous reality in the lives of Brazilian middle and upper classes, was and still is an inbuilt commodity in the pleasure machine which this architecture serves.

According to Richard J. Williams “during Kubitcheck’s presidency (Casa das Canoas) was a critical part of Rio’s cultural infrastructure, providing a regular setting for cocktails for visiting dignitaries and intellectuals. The erotic charge of the house was no doubt more imaginary than real, but equally, there is little doubt that it helped to contribute – along with the beaches and the floorshow of Copacabana, and the genuinely uninhibited revelry of Carnival – to the myth of Brazil as an erotic paradise. (...) The house in this scenario is far more than the European Modernists ever really envisaged. Far from being a ‘machine for living’, this is a riot of orgiastic pleasure.” (1)

My initial idea is to visually reproduce the accounts which helped to fuel and maintain the glamorous image of this indeed extremely beautiful house - the play of light, the curves, water, the Atlantic forest remnants which surround it, etc… For example the house as recounted by the architect Ernesto Rogers: “I doubt that I shall ever forget that scene: the sun was just dipping below the horizon, leaving us in the dark sea of orange, violet, green and indigo. The house repeated the themes of that orgiastic countryside (incense and the hum of insects); a vast rhapsody beginning in the roof vibrated down the walls and their niches to finish in the pool, where the water, instead of being neatly dammed up, spread freely along the rocks in a kind of forest pool.” (2)

Part of this project is to research on Niemeyer’s involvement with the Communist party and his views of what architecture can or cannot accomplish, as well as the conflicting meanings and purposes of modernist architecture within Brazilian society. These would be scripted as lines occasionally inserted in the dialogue between anonymous characters.

(1). ‘The Politics of Eros’, in Richard J. Williams’ Brazil: Modern architectures in history,
Reaktion Books, 2009
(2)/ ibid, (see longer extract below).

Runo Lagomarsino + Niemeyer

2012-01-11T00:29:00.000+01:00

Contratiempos (2009-10)

Consists of a dia projection loop and three postcards. The starting point for the work is the Parque Ibirapuera in São Paulo, designed by Oscar Niemeyer and Roberto Burle Marx, inaugurated in 1954 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the city. The projected photos are the record of the artist's search for the image of the South-American map in the cracks of the paved path that unites the different buildings in the park. There is an element of performativity as the artist walks along the 28,000 square meters marquise seeking the aged concrete for fissures that resemble his idea and memory of this territory's outline. In connection to the slide projection, three postcards reproduce the covers of books displayed in Niemeyer's library in Casa das Canoas, Rio de Janeiro, built by the architect between 1951 and 53 as his own residency. The covers read: "Afiches Républicaines de la Guerre d'Espagne", "Guerre et Revolution en Espagne" and "Кремль".

http://www.runolagomarsino.com

Stefan Bruggemann + Mies van der Rohe

2012-01-11T00:26:00.000+01:00

THE WOLD TRAPPED IN THE SELF (MIRRORS FOR WINDOWS)
Stefan Brüggemann at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion,
Curators: Laurent Fiévet and Silvia Guerra.
May 25 - 29, 2011

*****
Sunglasses

The World is a prisoner of its own making as if it has been abruptly locked behind a partition of mirrors.

Artist Stefan Brüggemann at Mies van der Rohe Pavilion follows the maxims Less is more and Gott steckt im Detail (God is in the detail). In order to extol the virtues of the architecture, he has chosen an approach as minimalist as it is radical: replacing the three windows of the principle facade with reflective surfaces. With this choice, the artist revisits the relationship between darkness and transparency in architecture by simultaneously shattering the structure of the façade and rendering it more concrete. The artist accomplishes this separation by blocking light inside the building and rejecting the outdoor light. He enacts a new spatial experiment that turns upside down the free circulation and the aesthetic and philosophical principles at the heart of this architecture. By inviting him to explore the recesses of his mind and question what informs his vision of the world (and therefore recreating his gaze and allowing us to better enter his artistic universe), Stefan Brüggemann includes everything, including the visitor, in his view of his world. This takes physical shape with the projection of his image on the pavilion’s facade through the simple use of reflection, which he in turn violently rejects by blocking his own gaze. We can see this as a way to distinguish the uniqueness of his approach and to use humor to underline his ability to turn something inside out. Just as the visitor finds himself confronted with the projected personification of Morning (as imagined by Georg Kolbe) who suddenly stretches out in front of the fountain’s liquid surface, he is also confronted by himself, face to face with his critical analysis of this artistic creation, whether it be iconoclast or respectful: this location helps the visitor come to terms with his own train of thought and to articulate his concerns. Deeply ambivalent, Stefan Brüggemann’s approach to this intervention brings us back to the image of the mirror which the artist, at times, so enjoys hanging the backwards: the perception generated by his intervention swallows everything up and risks being stifling, much like a posited claim that is still susceptible to doubt and wonder. It resembles a mirror reflecting light, which can both blind and dazzle the eyes.
text by Laurent Fiévet

*****
THE WORLD TRAPPED IN THE SELF
(MIRRORS FOR WINDOWS)

When the World looks in the mirror does it see perfection?

It may not be blind to its perfection, but perfection is boring.

The World’s perfection is its final delusion: man has designed another world richer and more complete than this world and this new one, like the first, is already burning up under the sun.

The Sun’s reflection in the mirror causes it to go up in flames.

Through Stefan Brüggemann’s simple material alterations to Barcelona’s Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, our gaze is held, captivated, by its own image – like a metaphor for this contemporary world.

Duality is a theme in the Pavilion: the marble veining and travertine grain repeat. Stefan Brüggemann’s intervention transforms the transparencies into mirrors through a slight of the hand that allows the spectator to see multiples of himself.

Since its renovation in 1986, art and architecture come together in this timeless work by Mies van der Rohe. Stefan Brüggemann’s ephemeral intervention terminates this dream of eternal life.

The sociologist Bruno Latour deemed that we were never modern, but Brüggemann pushes us to be hypermodern. We must march to the rhythm of our time.

text by Silvia Guerra

WWW.STEFANBRUGGEMANN.COM

Andrea Sala + Niemeyer

2012-01-10T18:09:00.002+01:00

Palme di Oscar, 2008

wax crayon and cement

2 pieces cm 72 x 67 / cm 40 x 48

Isa Melsheimer + Luckhardt / Scharoun / Taut

2012-01-10T17:44:00.003+01:00

Taut 2009, Glas, Silikon
75 x Ø 48 cm

Scharoun 2009, Glas, Silikon
39 x 40 x 42 cm

Luchardt 2, 2009, Glas, Silikon
25 x 71 x 57 cm

Josiah McElheny + Hablik / Luckhardt

2012-01-09T22:46:00.002+01:00

"Crystalline Landscape After Hablik and Luckhardt", 2010.

Rob Voerman + le Corbusier

2012-01-09T22:41:00.004+01:00

‘Unité #1′ 2010
watercolor and pencil on paper, 60×45 cm

‘Unité d’Habitation’ 2011
wood, cardboard and glass, 200×187x58 cm

‘Unité #2′
watercolor and pencil on paper, 45×60 cm

http://www.robvoerman.nl/

Josiah McElheny + Taut / Mies van der Rohe

2012-01-09T22:15:00.006+01:00

Installation views of:

Bruno Taut's Monument to Socialist Spirituality
(After Mies van der Rohe)
2009
Hand blown and molded glass modules, wood and hardware
105 3/4 x 75 x 55 inches
(268.6 x 190.5 x 139.7 cm)
ARG# MJ2009-001

©Josiah McElheny

Bruno Taut on Mies van der Rohe (1922), i
2009
Drawing on silver gelatin photograph using color
retouching pencil
23 1/2 x 17 1/2 inches
(59.7 x 44.5 cm)
Edition variant 1 of 4, 1AP
ARG# MJ2009-005

©Josiah McElheny

Santiago Borja + Le Corbusier

2011-11-10T20:10:00.002+01:00

SITIO is a site-specific art project produced for the Villa Savoye in Poissy, France. SITIO furthers the thesis developed by Adolf Max Vogt in his book Le Corbusier, The Noble Savage (2003), where Vogt traces back the invention of pilotis to childhood memories permeated by imagination and fantasy, rather than the high rationale argued by Le Corbusier. It will employ the same site: the iconic modern building and works created by the artist Santiago Borja, which depart from traditional artisanal techniques of certain Mayan communities in southern Mexico. As part of an anachronic montage, three main pieces will be presented: Destinerrance, which will superimpose two palapas installed in the park; Tapis (rugs), which is conceived for the floors of the Villa's living spaces; and Cosmogonie Suspendue, a weaved ceiling meant to represent the Mayan cosmos, produced for the building's terrace.

Born in Mexico City in 1970, Santiago Borja has a bachelor's of science in architecture from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, and a master's degree in the theory and practice of contemporary art and new media from the Université Paris 8, France. He has completed several training programs at Central Saint Martins in London and at Centro Nacional de las Artes in Mexico City, and his work is built on the intersection between art and architecture. Among other awards, he has been granted a SNCA-FONCA fellowship, and has received production grants from the Fundación Marcelino Botín and Fundación/Colección JUMEX. Recent projects include Fort Da / Sampler at the Neutra VDL-Research House in Los Angeles; In the Shadow of the Sun at the Irish Museum of Modern Art; Divan at the Freud Museum in London; Décalage at the Museo Experimental El Eco in Mexico City; and Halo at the Pavilion Le Corbusier, Foundation Suisse, CIUP in Paris. Forthcoming projects include Sitio at the Villa Savoye in Poissy and Chromatic Circus at Laxart in Los Angeles.

Xavier Veilhan "Les Architectes"

2011-07-21T00:05:00.002+02:00

Wilfrid Almendra + Neutra

2011-07-11T18:04:00.001+02:00

Killed in Action (CSH #6, Omega, Richard NEUTRA)
2009
51.18 x 82.68 x 14.96 inches
Pièce unique
The Case Study House project n°6, or 'Omega' house (1945) should have been the neighbor of the CSH n°13, or 'Alpha' (cf. infra) and in harmony with it. It shows off an industrial sheet metal roof and exemplifies the typical Richard NEUTRA architectural features visible in the slight slope and in the large excesses. The low cost of the construction and the efficiency of the materials corresponded to the purchasers needs. Covered by white light reflecting gravel and made to prevent the penetration of warmth, this roof ensures a very good isolation to the whole construction. Finally the cruciform plan allows the inclusion of four courtyards, each having a specific function.
Wilfrid ALMENDRA uses the sheet metal roof principal and imagines the various it could have suffered, possible additions or perforations. He also evokes the four courtyards through a geometrical paving made of four polish polished steel plates, which are reminders of both Carl ANDRE' s theories and Frank STELLA's shapes.

Killed in Action (Case Study Houses)

The Case Study Houses were experiments in residential architecture, aimed at building modern, efficient, affordable houses; it took place on the US West coast, mainly around Los Angeles, between 1945 and 1966. Sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine, the program's ambition was to create model houses that could help face the real estate boom caused by the end of World War II and the return of millions of demobilized soldiers, mainly young men about to start a home and family.

The program's announcement stated that each 'house must be capable of duplication and in no sense be an individual "performance"; (...) the houses will be conceived within the spirit of our times, using as far as is practicable, many war-born techniques and materials best suited to the expression of man's life in the modern world.' Major architects of the time were commissioned, including Richard NEUTRA, Charles and Ray EAMES, Pierre KOENIG and Eero SAARINEN. Out of 37 projects (35 detached houses and two apartment buildings), 26 were built (25 houses, amongst which some became icons of architecture, and the first part of a block of apartments) and stand, for those still existing, as part of one of the major architectural programs of the 20th century.

As for the ten projects that were not built, they became the inspiration of Wilfrid ALMENDRA's new series Killed in Action (Case Study Houses), a set of ten works each taking after one of the projects. The series takes its title from the official military expression and suggests that these aborted projects, whose 'raison d'être' and building processes were directly linked to the war, were soldiers of Modernism fallen to the field of honor. Wilfrid ALMENDRA made ten 'wall sculptures', low or high reliefs, which switch architecture from the horizontal to the vertical plan.

Each sculpture draws inspiration from the corresponding project's floor plan for its shape, as well as from the techniques and building materials planned for its construction. Wilfrid ALMENDRA finds here an opportunity to demonstrate his art of assemblage from a wide palette of materials: wood, concrete, metal, stone, glass, metal, plaster, tiles etc. As it is often the case with this artist, who considers the production process to be part of the artwork, these materials tell parallel, often autobiographical stories: a piece of asphalt cut from a road with an industrial lapidary becomes the ground for a house; the pyramid-shaped tops of concrete fence poles from a working class house, pavilions' roofs; and the door of his own family house in Portugal, the on piles platform for these pavilions.

Wilfrid ALMENDRA also plays with the specific architectural details of the various projects, which become as many abstract forms: here a monumental roof is turned into a totem of metal and wired glass; there a staircase or a ramp access, a terrace or a swimming pool, or a monumental indoor / outdoor fireplace are integrated into the compositions. Other elements, having to do with the projects context of conception or with the vision they conveyed, are similarly included into the sculptures. For instance, for one of the projects, all sketches at the time were staging a model family, with the father coming back home in his personal helicopter, tomorrow's common means of transportation – a naively optimistic vision of the future, and a blind faith in technique and progress; in Wilfrid ALMENDRA's sculpture, the helicopter blades themselves merge with the house.

But Wilfrid ALMENDRA also extrapolates on what the projects, if built, would have become, hence questioning the suburban destiny of the Modernist utopia. Indeed, before the historical importance of the whole program was recently acknowledged, many of the Case Study Houses that were built had been long neglected, or had undergone significant transformations, and even sometimes had been deeply denatured to adaptto the needs of their inhabitants. ALMENDRA's sculptures tell us about both the ageing of architecture – and through it about the passing of time –, and its 'customizing', whether it is with thick roughcast or unauthorized building modifications. For instance, in one of the works made out of cast concrete, the prominent reinforcing bars recall at the same time those who appear under the eroding concrete of dilapidated houses and the ones seen in houses built without authorization and never finished – skeletons of concrete with pointing metal bars, familiar silhouettes in Southern Europe.

The works of the series Killed in Action (Case Study Houses), shown here along with preparatory drawings and reproductions of original documents, subtly combine several levels of reading: at first, the display of a remarkably abstract aesthetic quality, they also offer a deep reflection on Modern architecture and its becoming, while investigating with empathy the way people adapt their habitat and to their habitat.

via Bugada Cargnel

Veronika Kelldorfer + Lautner

2011-07-09T05:02:00.002+02:00

Silver Lake, Lautner 2,
2008, single panel silk-screen print on glass, 59 x 87-3/4 inches, 150 x 223 cm, VK069

Veronika Kellndorfer + Koenig

2011-07-09T05:00:00.001+02:00

Pierre Koenig,
2008, single panel silk-screen print on glass, 43-1/4 x 90-1/2 inches, 110 x 230 cm, VK071

thenorthroom + Le Corbusier

2011-06-30T12:44:00.000+02:00

Such Is Our Pleasure
Szu-Han Ho and Jesse Vogler
16 mm film loop
2008

This film reanimates one account of the utopian impulse–Le Corbusier’s Plan for a City of Three Million, a project that has become iconic of both the visions and failures of the modernist moment. That this work has come to epitomize a modernist directive for city planning, one both eerily familiar and outlandishly distant, serves as the basis of our inquiry into the uncanny space of a dislocated subject. By collapsing a digital animation of the City of Three Million onto the recognizably antiquated medium of 16mm stock, this project attempts to complicate the path between a memory of existing urban forms and the possibilities of future urban arrangements.

http://www.thenorthroom.org

Matthias Müller + Costa / Niemeyer

2011-06-28T21:47:00.004+02:00

Matthias Müller
Vacancy
1998
16 mm film transferred to DVD, projected, 14:30 minutes
Courtesy Thomas Erben Gallery, New York

Ursula Mayer + Goldfinger

2011-05-04T02:16:00.002+02:00

INTERIORS
2006
3,10 min
super 16 mm transfer on DVD
color and black and white
Copyright © Ursula Mayer

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ARCHITECTURE AND ITS SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS IS AGAIN AT THE CENTRE OF URSULA MAYER'S FILM INTERIORS (2006). FOR THE SET, MAYER CHOSE THE HOME OF THE ARCHITECT ERNÖ GOLDFINGER AND HIS FAMILY, LOCATED ON 2 WILLOW ROAD IN HAMPSTEAD. THIS PLACE REPRESENTS THE ARTISTIC AVANT-GARDE IN 1930S LONDON. GOLDFINGER'S ART COLLECTION, WHICH COMPRISES CLASSICAL MODERN WORKS FROM MAX ERNST TO MARCEL DUCHAMP, IS USED IN THE FILM AS A UNIQUE SETTING AND DRAMATIC ELEMENT. WITH THIS HISTORICALLY SIGNIFICANT BACKGROUND, A MEETING BETWEEN A YOUNG WOMAN AND AN ELDERLY ONE IS IMAGINED TO TAKE PLACE, WHEN IN FACT IT NEVER DID. ULTIMATELY, A REPLICA OF A SCULPTURE MADE BY THE PROMINENT BRITISH SCULPTRESS BARBARA HEPWORTH, AS A DIFFERENT PERCEPTION OF TIME AND REALITY, BECOMES BOTH A SEPARATING AS WELL AS A BINDING ELEMENT BETWEEN THE CONTRASTS OF THE TRADITIONAL AND THE MODERN.
“MAYER'S FILM HIGHLIGHTS THE ABSENCE OF A FEMALE PRESENCE IN ARCHITECTURE AND FILM BY MEANS OF A SEQUENCE OF ENCOUNTERS, SOME OF WHICH APPEAR LIKE STILLS, IN THE TRADITION OF CINDY SHERMAN'S UNTITLED FILM STILLS.”
(WALTER SEIDL, INTERIORS, CATALOGUE, VERBUND SAMMLUNG WIEN)

CREDITS:
Written and directed by
URSULA MAYER
Cinematographer
DAVID ROM
Actors
ELAINE BANHAM
KATI URHO
Editors
URSULA MAYER
KONRAD WELZ
Sound design
KONRAD WELZ
Thanks to
NATIONAL TRUST
MILNER REBECCA
MARTIN FLETCHER
Produced for
steirischer herbst 2006
No space is innocent!

Andro Wekua, Pink Wave Hunter

2011-04-09T03:59:00.001+02:00

Andro Wekua, Pink Wave Hunter, 2011
Installation view with Pink Wave Hunter Series, 2010/2011 and Sunset Painting, 2005/2011. Courtesy: the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York/Brussels. Photo: Nils Klinger

Marc Camille Chaimowicz + Mies van der Rohe

2011-03-28T17:18:00.000+02:00

Curtain (MvdR), 2008.

Tilman Wendland + Hansen / Le Corbusier / Niemeyer

2011-02-27T02:23:00.000+01:00

Untitled, 2006

Cardboard, masonite, magazine copy,

varible dimensions

Courtesy of the artist & European Art Projects

Photos: Krzysztof Zieliński / European Art Projects

Tilman Wendland (*1969, lives in Berlin) creates from basic, light materials such as paper, cardboard and PVC ephemeral structures, which are integrated in existent architectural situations. They provide comments, criticisms or also caricatures. Normally, his works, which are seldom intended to last, are rendered completely in white. In spite of the strict reduction of colour and form they reveal themselves through a playful-ironic treatment of the subject.

For Ideal City - Invisible Cities Wendland developed a room installation, which enquired into the architectural and city planning shapes and elements of Le Corbusier, Oskar Hansen and Oscar Niemeyer. The ideal city concepts of the architects were condensed by Wendland into space-penetrating white cardboard shelves, sublime and also perishable

via Invisible Cities

Valeska Soares + Niemeyer

2011-02-27T02:15:00.000+01:00

Tonight, 2002

Titled Tonight (2002), the video was first installed in the very dance hall where the sequences had been filmed. The soundtrack is a remixed version of Burt Bacharach’s song The Look of Love (1967), altered by Belo Horizonte sound artists O Grivo. A first version of Folly has been shown at the 51st Venice Biennial in 2005.

Anthony Auerbach + Johnson

2011-02-27T02:04:00.000+01:00

The State of New York, aerial survey, New York State Pavilion, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens, New York, 11–13 October 2006, 2,427 vertical photographs

Lucy Williams + Mies van der Rohe

2011-02-26T22:46:00.002+01:00

The Glass-Walled House in Summer 2005 mixed media, 28-1/2 x 28-1/2 x 1-1/2 inches Courtesy McKee Gallery

Jim Isermann + Le Corbusier

2011-02-26T22:44:00.000+01:00

Project Unité Firminy
1993
papier peint sérigraphié, linoléum coupé, coussins de mousse
dimensions variables

via Jim Isermann

Natasha Kissell + Mies van der Rohe

2011-02-26T22:36:00.000+01:00

Pink Canyons, 2008, 48" x 42", oil on canvas

Angelina Gualdoni + Costa / Niemeyer

2011-02-26T22:31:00.000+01:00

Praca dos Tres Poderes, Noon
Oil and Acrylic on Canvas
48" x 84"
2005

via Angelina Gualdoni

Christine Erhard + Lubetkin

2011-02-26T22:29:00.000+01:00

Penguin Pool, 200670 x 90 cm

via Christine Erhard

AKassen + Mansilla / Tuñón

2011-02-26T22:14:00.000+01:00

Window to the world
Window glass from the facade of the museum is installed in three sets of joined automatic slidingdoors. The piece functions as a kinetic sculpture activated by the movements of the audience and itself.

via AKassen

Christian Anderson + Mies van der Rohe

2011-02-26T22:07:00.003+01:00

Installation view: Christian Andersson, From Lucy with love, Moderna Museet Malmö, 22 January-24 April, 2011. Photo: Terje Östling © Christian Andersson/BUS 2011. All works courtesy the artist and Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin/Stockholm.

Fiona Tan + SANAA

2011-02-22T14:56:00.000+01:00

Cloud Island I, Project for the Venice Architecture Biennale, 2010

2 channel HD installation
colour, stereo
2 HD-cam safety masters, 2 HD projectors, 2 harddisc players, 2 stereo amplifiers, 4 stereo speakers, 1 double-sided white projection screen 2.0 x 1.12 m

Filmed on location on Inujima and Teshima, Japan

Commissioned by the Naoshima Fukutake Art Museum Foundation
Funded by Naoshima Fukutake Art Museum Foundation and Wako Works of Art, Tokyo

via Fiona Tan

John Riddy + Soane

2011-02-22T14:09:00.000+01:00

London (Bank) 2008, 2009
Photograph on paper
image: 720 x 930 mm
on paper, print

Ed Ruscha + Armet & Davis

2011-02-22T13:48:00.000+01:00

Norm's, La Cienega, on Fire, 1964, oil on canvas 64 1/4 H x 124 1/2 W (inches)

Ed Ruscha + Pereira

2011-02-22T13:38:00.001+01:00

Los Angeles County Museum on Fire, 1968, oil on canvas 53 1/2 H x 133 1/2 W (inches)

Pierre Bismuth + Le Corbusier

2011-02-21T15:49:00.000+01:00

Complexe des villas / Bâtiment Le Corbusier (élévation)
2010
Ink on polyacetate
28.35 x 20.47 inches
Pièce unique
Pierre BISMUTH performs the impossible synthesis between the two faces of Le Corbusier: from the villas blanches to housing projects, with a sense of humor and economy of means that are his trademark. He superposes, in a small scale model, section views and computer generated images (Complexes des villas / Bâtiment Le Corbusier, 2006-2010), several Villas Savoye, to create a building that the Swiss architect might not have rejected – let alone the destiny of neglected social housing and the carcass of torched cars in front.

via Bugada Cargnel.

George Maciunas + Le Corbusier

2011-02-21T14:52:00.000+01:00

George Maciunas
Pencil and ink on paper
circa. early 1950s
9″ x 12″

Xing Danwen + Holl

2011-02-21T14:39:00.001+01:00

Urban Fiction
2004 - present
photography with digital manipulation

My interest for urban subject has been complated in my mind for years but the particular idea of this work was forged some time in 2004 while I traveled extensively in Europe. After being in so many cities in the world, I realized that globalization has made urban landscapes everywhere similar and blurred the boundaries between them. So often, "here" can be anywhere. With this work, I have brought my vision and perspective to these urban spaces.

The architectural structures that I photographed are all maquettes made to promote real-estate developments that are being planned in China today. Some of the buildings already exist, and others will soon begin construction. When you face these models showing such a variety of different spaces and think about the life-styles associated with them, you start to wonder: is this the picture of life today? Do we really live in this kind of space and environment?

Globalization is reshaping our urban environment and our vision of contemporary life - which celebrates the “new” constantly replacing the “old.” As personal living spaces expand with the growth of income, the cityscape becomes more dense, filled up with modern buildings and high-rise towers. People live in cubes that are squeezed next to one another, separated only by thin walls. This physical proximity, instead of leading to greater closeness and intimacy between people, can often create psychological distance and loneliness.

The sculptural form of these new residential buildings, the floor plan of the apartments, and the various interior designs are all related to the inhabitants and their “individual” taste and needs. The models of these new living spaces are perfect, clean and beautiful but they are also so empty and detached of human drama. When you take these models and begin to add real life - even a single drop of it - so much changes.

This entire body of work of "Urban Fiction" is playful and fictitious - wandering between reality and fantasy. All the figures in this series are acts of me, playing different characters. This creates another paradox: “I” am real but at the same time “I” am unreal. The figures act out totally imaginative roles and fanciful stories, staged within the maquettes, their plots invented by me and visualized for these spaces. For example, “I” am a white-collar office worker brought to despair by job pressures and spiritual emptiness. Sometimes “I” am a materialistic woman enjoying a life of pleasure and dissipation. Or “I” am a young girl who, in a moment of unrestrained rage, accidentally killed her lover. Together, the resulting pictures compose an episodes, serialized narrative structure for "Urban Fiction". As a whole, these images represent the state of urban life today.

In the period of my childhood in China, skyscrapers were unattainable concepts connected to the West, viewable only in films or magazines. Today I live in the pictures I make and I, along with my compatriots, can imagine our future by bending down to examine tiny models of buildings. This, perhaps, is another reality of the "fantasies" which govern our contemporary life.

The photographs are shot both digitally and on film and manipulated, creating many layers, utilizing computer program tools.

The medium is photographic C - print.
Large size: DIASEC (back-mounting on dibond, face-mounting with Plexi-glas, rectangle brace behind)
Small size: back-mounting on dibond and with frame around.

There are 2 sizes:
Large size: the height is fixed at 170cm, the width varies from 210-270 cm; Edition of 5.
Small Size: the height is fixed at 80cm, the width varies from 100-150 cm; Edition of 8.

via Xing Danwen

Frederic Gmeiner, Torsten Posselt & Benjamin Maus + Libeskind

2011-02-21T14:23:00.000+01:00

Jüdisches Museum, 2009
via Extracts of Local Distance

Pia Rönicke + Schindler

2011-02-21T13:07:00.000+01:00

The Life of Schindler House, 2002

Heather Rowe + Rudolph

2011-02-21T11:53:00.000+01:00

Heather Rowe:
On Returning
November 9 – December 23, 2007
Opening Reception: November 9, 6-8pm

D'Amelio Terras is pleased to present our second solo exhibition with Heather Rowe. She will exhibit On Returning, a single large-scale sculpture positioned between the two main gallery columns. This work continues Rowe’s exploration of architectural fragmentation, structural dysfunction, and material inversion. Countering the more conventional construction-like elements are strategically placed details, culled from a range of design styles and periods.

This installation takes a late modernist house designed by Paul Rudolph in 1972 as its point of departure. The Westport Connecticut dwelling was recently demolished to make way for a new construction. In Rowe’s incarnation of the design, the façade of the house is mirrored and the two resulting structures are inverted and placed at an angle. The outside walls face each other and the interior becomes exposed and unprotected. Remnants of a fictional domestic space (smashed window frame, tiled bathroom mirrors, a patterned curtain) are inserted within the sculpture and elevate it into a more personal and psychological realm. This illusionistic space is meant to be passed around and through allowing viewers to return to the same intersections and question their similarities and/or differences. Here, the architecture, its interior design and style become pronounced in a particular way where they become extensions of irrational attachments and neurosis.

“…on returning to a place which exists only in the mind. Either a place destroyed or a place once inhabited and then left. The mind brings about distorted ideas of the actual space-assigning scale and size in a more psychologically charged way, shaped by events that occurred there.” (from the artist)

Rowe is currently featured in 'Undone' at The Whitney Museum at Altria, New York. In 2007 she was included in Practical F/X, Mary Boone Gallery, New York, and Stubborn Materials, Peter Blum Gallery, New York. Her work has been exhibited at The Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati; Michael Zink Galerie, Munich; White Columns, New York; and Artists Space, New York. She received her MFA from Columbia University and lives and works in New York City.

The Artist would like to thank Nepal Asatthawasi at the Paul Rudolph
Foundation for her generous help with this project as well as Chris
Mottalini for his photographs of the Micheels House.

via D'Amelio Terras

Heather Rowe + Taut

2011-02-21T11:44:00.000+01:00

Plans That Have Fallen Through
2006
glass, wood, flocked wallpaper, partial plan for Bruno Taut Glashaus (1914)
Table: 72 x 84 x 41 inches; Drawing: 72 x 72 inches
Courtesy of the artist and D’Amelio Terras, New York

Gail Pickering + the Smithsons

2011-02-21T11:42:00.000+01:00

BRUTALIST PREMOLITION, 2008.

Media Art Bath is delighted to announce the exhibition of a new commission by Gail Pickering, BRUTALIST PREMOLITION featuring both film and performance.

The performance and film works of Gail Pickering are characterized by a layering of performative fictions, constructed and sourced through specific sites and historical or political events. Her recent video works explore ideas of highly authored forms of collaboration. Working with both amateur and professional actors, she devises scenarios or situations in which the discrepancy between individual and ‘role’ is emphasised and questioned.

BRUTALIST PREMOLITION takes as its starting point the snaking concrete housing estate Robin Hood Gardens, designed by Alison and Peter Smithson, a key example of post-war New Brutalist architecture intended as a utopian form of large scale social housing. Pickering works from the interior of the architecture, producing a film from within one of the flats on the estate. The film shows a resident family casting professional actors to play themselves. Embedding familiar faces from British television and film, we see the actors repeating well-rehearsed scenes from their inventory of past roles. As the work progresses, the actors begin to occupy the flat where their theatricality and professionalism is played out alongside the participation of the family.

For its presentation at Arnolfini, Pickering will produce a special performance alongside the film, extending the works interests into the realm of a live event.

For more information and tickets please contact Bridget Crone or Lucy Sames on 01225 442 591, or email: info@mediaartbath.org.uk.

BRUTALIST PREMOLITION has been commissioned by Media Art Bath with support from the Henry Moore Foundation and is also included in a solo exhibition, as part of ‘Nought to Sixty' - 13-20 October 2008, Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London. www.ica.org.uk

Media Art Bath – championing contemporary art and ideas through the development of bold new work.

Pia Rönicke + Eames

2011-02-21T11:12:00.001+01:00

Untitled Eames Model (2001) 1 min 36 seg.

Pia Rönicke + Mies van der Rohe

2011-02-21T10:40:00.000+01:00

Outside the Living Room
Denmark, 2000 / 9:10 min (Computer Animation)
colour & sound

The Film
The film is an investigation of the garden, an attempt to reconcile nature with urbanism. Rönicke’s strange visions include Manhattan skyscrapers, surrounded by dense forest, and rice fields on top of Mies van der Rohe’s Lake Shore Drive Apartments. The visions are as utopians of a restored balance between urbanism and nature. In the film, collage is used as a medium with images from popular culture. Rönicke also criticises modernism’s way of presupposing one particular way of living. In her pieces, Rönicke takes on the role of a kind of a poetic urban planner. By presenting her subjective utopias, she is on one hand revealing a possible future, and on the other, reﬂecting on their utopian character.
Text: Henrikke Nielse

Ra di Martino + Friedman

2011-02-21T10:05:00.000+01:00

If You See the Object, the Object Sees You, HD Video 4’ (circa), 2010

Sam Durant + Koenig

2011-02-18T15:52:00.001+01:00

Abandoned House #1 (Case Study #22) 1995

Mixed media
object: 780 x 1080 x 810 mm
sculpture

The Case Study Houses were an experiment in residential architecture, designed by major architects to provide inexpensive and efficient model homes in response to the post-war American housing boom. Durant has made a series of scale replicas of the houses in states of disrepair. Case Study no.22, the Stahl House, was designed and built by Pierre Koenig in 1960 and has become a modernist icon. Durant’s model has holes knocked through the walls and is littered with debris, suggesting decline and degradation, and the failure of this utopian ideal.

via Tate Modern

Sam Durant, Abandoned Houses (Collages, Sculptures, Drawings)

Xing Danwen + Hejduk

2011-02-18T15:43:00.001+01:00

Wall House
2007
an installation with 4 photographs & 1 animation video projection

Looking out the window is a view of a city - a large city, populated by people, buildings, cars and roads. In this scale and from this perspective, distance and time are no longer simple realities of everyday life. People commute from one place to another, passing within centimeters and seconds of each other. We can be so close but at the same time so far away from each other physically and emotionally. This is I picture big cities. As the material quality of life has improved, less intimacy remains; the more a city develops and expands, the further we are alienated from one another. Loneliness becomes a fact, which envelops our everyday life and feelings.

In Feb 2007, I was invited to participate in the Wall House Foundation Residency Program located in Northern Holland on the outskirts of Groninger. Wall House is one of the few actual realized architecture designed by John Hejduk. His name might not be well known, but he is a widely respected and influential architect whose conceptual and theoretical philosophy significantly impacted the field in the 1970s. Until Hejduk’s death in 2000, none of his projects had ever been realized. Wall House was built posthumously in 2001.

The central element in the Wall House is, as the name suggests, an 18 meter-wide and 14 meter-high wall. This wall horizontally cuts the house into two discreet spaces. On one side of the wall there is a three-storey residential space, which includes the living room, the kitchen adjoining dining room and bedroom. On the other side are the more technical spaces, such as the office, stairs, bathroom and toilet, and a corridor which is about 30 meter-long and 2 meter-wide. This long and narrow path vertically runs through the center of the house from the house entrance into the dinning room, which ends at The Wall.

It seems like a long bridge connecting these two spaces from two sides of The Wall.
Wall House’s unconventional floor plan reflects Hejduk’s interest in the tensions between public and private space within a dwelling. In the case of Wall House, the occupant always feels detached from what happens on the other side of the wall and, at the same time, that person will always have the feeling of being a stranger within the interior — essentially creating a sense of isolation on both sides of the wall. Inhabiting Wall House for two weeks on my own, I explored the theoretical concepts behind Hejduk’s work. As my focus shifted away from the architecture, I become inspired by the psychological experience of living in the house and created my own work, “Wall House”.

In “Wall House”, I use Hedjuk’s problematic physical space as a starting point and continue to explore themes of contemporary loneliness and detachment in urban life. I project the idea of emotion and physical displacement through the use of a solitary figure: “I” live alone without a choice and “I” am obligated to accept this loneliness. Confronted with this reality, I am searching for truth and an answer to the question, “how does one live alone?” I intend to raise awareness about living alone, where “you” are your only companion.

The interior spaces in these photographs were shot inside the actual Wall House. I am the subject in every photograph. The exterior cityscapes, seen through the windows, are images from cities in China. I hope to create a contrast between the vacant interior space and the dense city outside. This creates an invisible relationship between people who are linked by proximity but lack true interpersonal connections. Details and symbolic visuals were digitally inserted within the photographs by computer and include details from John Hedjuk’s original Wall House maquette.

This work is presented as an installation with 4 photographs, 1 animation video projection and white plaster walls. The plaster walls are set up as the division of jointed apartments next to each other.

The sizes of the 4 photographs are different. They are hung along the walls separately with different depth and perspective, which suggests the views into the rooms.

The animation video loop projects onto the image of an empty bedroom, which creates an illusionary layer over this emptiness. These two medias merge into each other, create a unique effect between the fact and illusion, which implicates the reversed relationship between the neighbors. The woman from the animation video supposes the owner of the empty bedroom (image 3), who is drawn from my act too.
The photo prints are photographic C-prints, DIASEC (back-mounted on aluminum, face-mounted with Plexi-glas, supported by rectangle braces behind).

The print sizes are:
image 1, 160 x120 cm / 63 x 47.25 inch; (WxH)
image 2, 100 x80 cm / 39.4 x31.5 inch; (WxH)
image 3, 130 x100 cm / 51.2 x 39.4 inch; (WxH)
image 4, 90 x 120 cm / 35.4 x 47.2 inch; (WxH)
The animation video is a 1-minute loop with sound in DVD format.

4 photographic C- prints + 1 DVD; Edition of 8

via Xing Danwen

Sophie Whettnall + Piñòn / Viaplana

2011-02-18T15:39:00.000+01:00

Sophie Whettnall, Tancat per obres, Barcelona, 2002

via Sophie Whetnall

Enoc Perez + Adjaye

2011-02-18T15:07:00.000+01:00

Enoc Perez, Institute of International Visual Arts, London (2008)
Oil on linen
200 x 200 cm/ 78,74 x 78,74 inches

Julião Sarmento + Gropius

2011-02-18T14:28:00.001+01:00

Tender after the Goods Engine (Dessau 1926), 1995. Mixed media and graphite on canvas.

Eppoi sono superstizioso (Dessau 1926), 1995. Mixed media and graphite on canvas.

Rita Ernst + Mies van der Rohe

2011-02-17T13:16:00.001+01:00

Projekt – Mies van der Rohe, Haus Tugendhat, 2009, Acryl auf Leinwand, 89 x 146 cm

Mies van der Rohe, Neue Nationalgalerie, 2009, Acryl auf Leinwand, 60 x 80 cm

Donovan Barrow + Mies van der Rohe

2011-02-17T12:52:00.001+01:00

Farnsworth Model, 2006. Carton, feuille de cuivre. 18 x 30 x 13 cm.

Farnsworth House, 2006. Laque sur toile. 134 x 165 cm.

Davide Cascio + Le Corbusier

2011-02-17T12:48:00.001+01:00

Davide Cascio: Aus/From: E.N., 2008

Installationsansicht/Installation view (Detail)
Le Corbusier, 1943, Study for Marseille-Sud

www.davidecascio.com

William Pope + Le Corbusier #2

2011-02-17T12:36:00.000+01:00

Corbu Pops, 2009

via Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts

William Pope + Le Corbusier #1

2011-02-17T12:33:00.001+01:00

Aquarium, 2009

Untitled, 2009

via Samson

Justin Hibbs + Duiker

2011-02-17T12:23:00.002+01:00

Sanitorium, 50 x 35 inches2004, oil on board

via Galerie Lucy Mackintosh

Jen Liu + Mies van der Rohe / Loos / Fuller

2011-02-17T11:43:00.000+01:00

Dawn of The Alpha Genesis
Video, 4', Berlin 2005

In her videos Jen Liu plays with the technical-optimistic visions by the modernist architects. Animated in an 80ies videogame-style her heroes Mies van der Rohe, Adolf Loos and Buckminster Fuller have to destroy cities.

Rita McBride + Le Corbusier

2011-02-17T11:27:00.001+01:00

Rita McBride: Settlements (Chandigarh, India), 2009, Bronze, Stahl und Messing, 35 x 130 x 120 cm

via MAI 36

Juan Araujo + Bo Bardi

2011-02-17T11:20:00.002+01:00

Glass House No. 6 2006

Glass House No. 7 2006

Antoni Muntadas + Mies van der Rohe

2011-02-17T10:55:00.005+01:00

On Translation: Paper BP / MVDR, 2009

via Fundació Mies van der Rohe

Guy Tillim + Guedes

2011-02-16T02:30:00.003+01:00

Apartment building, Beira, Mozambique, 2008

Apartment building, Beira, Mozambique, 2007

via Michael Stevenson

Enoc Perez + Foster

2011-02-16T02:16:00.005+01:00

"Bank of China Tower, Hong Kong" 2010, oil on canvas. 16x20 inches.

"Swiss Re HQ, London" 2010, oil on canvas. 80x600 inches

"Hearst Tower, New York" 2009, oil on paper. 42x30 inches;

"Hearst Tower, New York" 2009, oil on canvas. 60x80 inches

via Enoc Perez

Erwin Wurm + Mies van der Rohe

2011-02-16T02:08:00.001+01:00

Mies van der Rohe melting, 2005

Josiah McElheny + Mies van der Rohe / Taut

2011-02-16T02:05:00.003+01:00

Bruno Taut on Mies van der Rohe (1922), ii 2009.

Dirk Brömmel + Mies van der Rohe

2011-02-16T02:00:00.003+01:00

V.T. Nr. 13, 2002.

V.T. Nr. 3, 2002.

V.T. Nr. 4, 2002.

Angela Ferreira + Mies van der Rohe

2011-02-16T01:50:00.001+01:00

Crown Hall / Dragon House, 2009

Sophie Tottie "Squares"

2011-02-16T01:36:00.002+01:00

Squares, 2008.

via Sophie Tottie

Lorna Simpson + Gropius

2011-02-16T01:29:00.002+01:00

Corridor, 2003. Double-projection video installation, video transferred to DVD.
13 minutes, 45 seconds, sound.

via Lorna Simpson (movie here)

Corridor is a film that shows the daily routines of two women living in two different centuries and two different worlds. The actions of the women, which are projected in parallel, take place in two historically and architecturally important domestic interiors in New England: the Coffin House in Newbury, Massachusetts, occupied by the Coffin family in 1678, and the single-family residence in Lincoln, Massachusetts, that Walter Gropius built for himself and his family in 1938.

The two protagonists, both played by Wangeshi Mutu, are young women, dressed appropriately for their respective historical setting, doing their daily chores at home. In the Coffin House we hear songs that the black pianist “Blind Tom” Wiggins composed in the middle of the eighteenth century; in the Gropius House we hear twentieth-century jazz.

The film, whose action does not lead to a dramatic climax and simply occurs without any didactic impulse, follows a precise, even tempo. The parallel strands of the action and their musical themes establish a dialogue between the two women. The lost time, the light, the furnishings, and the young woman’s impenetrable face suggest a number of interpretations without asserting any of them.

In Corridor Lorna Simpson, who became internationally known in the early 1990s for her works combining photography and text, replaces text with music that establishes an interrelation with the visuality of the film.

Barbara Visser + Guerrini / La Padula / Romano

2011-02-16T01:24:00.002+01:00

Former Futures 2 (Hiroshi Sugimoto - wall paper), 2008

Isa Melsheimer + Le Corbusier

2011-02-16T01:17:00.006+01:00

Press Release

For her third solo show at Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Isa Melsheimer is presenting a project centered on architect Le Corbusier (1887 – 1965) and his relationship, at the beginning of the 20th century, with a Parisian collector, Charles de Beistégui.

In Paris during the 1920s, Charles de Beistégui, a fervent admirer of surrealism, asked Le Corbusier to build him an apartment, which would serve exclusively for parties. Unlike Charles de Bestégui, the architect’s interest in surrealism was limited.

The result: an apartment near the Champs-Elysées having no roof, a living room directly open to the sky, and furnished only by a fireplace. The walls were limited to 1.5 meters in height to parcel the view of certain places. For example, from one perspective, the walls allow only the upper half of the Arc de Triomphe to be seen, and from another perspective, only an upper section of the Eiffel Tower was visible. The walls could be displaced using an electrical remote control, however the apartment itself had no electricity and, consequentially, was lit with candles. This apartment no longer exists today.

Through the works in this exhibition, Isa Melsheimer searches to become aware of the odd relationship that united the two men during the duration of their project. Using very different mediums such as concrete, embroidery, and gouache, the artist strives to bring to the forefront a rather surprising result, for the apartment made by Le Corbusier is actually close to a surrealistic installation.

Two concrete sculptures recreate two important points of the “roof-garden”. A wax sculpture on the floor made from burning candles night after night and sculpted by the wind refer to the space’s candlelit evenings.

On a “Paris” scarf bought in a souvenir shop, Isa Melsheimer embroidered the map of Paris, an allusion to Le Corbusier and his schematic and naïve vision of the city.

A step down to the lower, second exhibition space, the artist has chosen to create a more intimate atmosphere. A bird posted on a “tree” limb made from glass and perched near the wall conjures the apartment’s only “occupant”. Two large, kitsch embroideries take on details of the view of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe and, in this way, recreate a situation scenario within the space.

Some architectural details of the apartment, such as the spiral stair, surface in a very peculiar manner in the gouaches hanging on the far wall.

via Galerie Wolff

Barbara Visser + Rietveld

2011-02-16T00:58:00.006+01:00

This work revolves around the critique that the current way of building does not accomodate the multiple social, professional and psychological changes in peoples' lives today.  The text Transformation House I was submitted for an architectural competition to design an alternative dwelling for the new city of Leidsche Rijn in the Netherlands, organized by Bureau Beyond. The text is published in 'Barbara Visser is er niet' (2006). For the final round of the competition, the animation was made, not as a design, but to visualize the concept of a structure expanding and shrinking as a consequence of the development of an individual life.   Animation made in collaboration with Olivier Campagne at Artefactory, Paris, F.

Exhibited
Maak ons Land, Nai, Rotterdam / Space for your Future, MOT, Tokyo, Japan / How to live together, 27th Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil / VIP Huis Competition finals, Het Gebouw, Leidsche Rijn

via Barbara Visser (download here her letter to Rietveld)

Angela Ferreira + Oud / Siza

2011-02-15T21:05:00.003+01:00

Two Houses 2001

In Rotterdam, the influence of architecture in the work of Angela Ferreira is focused on a special building project from the 1920s: the Kiefhoek by J.J.P. Oud. The way in which the renovation of this public housing project has altered its meaning and function inspired Ferreira to design an architectural sculpture. She drew a parallel with a 1970s housing project in Bouça, Portugal, which was designed by Alvaro Siza. Although the housing in Bouça is still in use - in Rotterdam the Kiefhoek has, in the meantime, become a museum the residents, influenced by the architectural tourism, have sold features such as window frames as museum objects.
In Squatters, Ferreira juxtaposes the two projects in a scale model that visitors may only enter in their socks. A functional structure has thus been transformed into an aesthetic object that must be regarded from afar and can no longer be used.

Terence Gower "Ciudad Moderna"

2011-02-15T19:08:00.003+01:00

Ciudad Moderna, 2004
Digital Video. 6 Minutes

Shown as a digital video projection, Ciudad Moderna is a composite of clips taken from a popular Mexican Film released in 1966. Each film fragment shows images of 1950’s and 60’s Mexican Modernist architecture, either interiors, facades or streetscapes.

The source film, Despedida de Casada (Dir. Juan de Orduña), is treated as a document of the contemporary city, and is re-edited to show off the architecture of Mexico, such as the Museum of Anthropology, the apartment buildings of Avenida de la Reforma, and the Hotel Presidente in Acapulco.

The clips are interspersed with single frames which each capture an image of the architecture in pristine black and white, or dissolve to a perspective rendering (below right) like illustrations from an architectural monograph. Ciudad Moderna untangles the architecture from the narrative thread of the original film and recomposes a story of the city as a built environment.

Video editor: Anita Chao. Photo work: Lindsay Stadig. Graphic work (below right): Natalia Porter.

via Terence Gower

Caspar Stracke + Le Corbusier

2011-02-15T19:04:00.002+01:00

Rong Xiang (2008)

Rong Xiang is a work on architectural replicas, piracy and its political consequences. It is a comparison of LeCorbusier's chapel Notre Dame Du Haut in Ronchamp, France with its exact replica in Zhengzhou, Henan province East China. The work further compares LeCorbusier's human-scale informed "Modulor" concept with ancient Tao philosophy of Confucius and master builders of the Han dynasty. The Ronchamp replica in Zhengzhou is now a legend - it was short lived, erected in 1994 and demolished in 2006 after a three year lasting dispute with the "Foundation LeCorbusier" in Paris.

Sadie Murdoch + Gray / Johnson / Mies van der Rohe

2011-02-15T18:51:00.002+01:00

Water and Dust (2004), 7 minutes

The artist disguises herself as architect Eileen Gray and crashes Philip Johnson's favorite table at the Four Season's restaurant (designed by Johnson in 1959). Murdoch's character proceeds to play with the equivalent of a set of building blocks, transforming Johnson's monolithic guest house designed for his own estate in the early 1950s into the Monument to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, equally monolithic and designed by Johnson's "master" Mies van der Rohe in 1926.

Sadie Murdoch + Perriand

2011-02-15T18:39:00.003+01:00

Work-in-progress for Modelling Charlotte Perriand, Sadie Murdoch 2006. Reproduced courtesy of the artist.

The 1928 Chaise Longue, a design classic, has often been attributed simply to Le Corbusier, but was in fact designed in collaboration with Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret. The now iconic photograph that illustrates the piece was not only staged but also modelled by Perriand herself. In this provocative and beautifully realised exhibition, artist Sadie Murdoch uses her own formal language to reshape this historical image. By impersonating Charlotte Perriand and photographing herself in the same pose on the chaise longue, Murdoch asks complex questions about authorship and identity.

This reinterpretation of the classic image has involved Murdoch in a painstaking process of finding props, clothes and black and white stage make-up in order to produce a monochrome image on a colour film. Even the shadows in the original photograph have been re-made, in a move which undermines the rationalist project of modernism.

Sadie Murdoch is an artist who has compellingly pursued her fascination with modernist architecture and design and how it is represented. The often antagonistic but ultimately mutually dependent histories of the female and male designer is a subject which has interested Murdoch for some time and in two recent solo exhibitions in London she has examined the positions of Lilly Reich and Eileen Gray. As well as giving a feminist reading of modernist design, Murdoch offers an incisive commentary on its materials, highlighting their sheen and transparency but also their degradation and vulnerability.

Sadie Murdoch (b.1965) studied at Leeds Metropolitan University (BA and PhD) and at Chelsea (MA), and on the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in New York. She has recently shown at domoBaal contemporary art and at the Henry Peacock Gallery in London (2002 and 2005).

via The Henry Moore Institute

Maurice Utrillo + Abadie

2011-02-15T18:09:00.001+01:00

La Rue Norvins à Montmartre, c. 1910

Andy Graydon + Wright

2011-02-15T13:20:00.003+01:00

Untitled (plate tectonics), 2009.
By installing excavated stones from New Jersey in a gallery, Robert Smithson, in the late 1960s, revealed the dialectic between abstract and actual locations. Sometimes in containers, sometimes piled, the stones in the gallery represented a far away location without resembling it. Something of New Jersey, Smithson maintained, was held in those rocks and their displacement resulted in the expansion of the original site, both physically and conceptually. The Site Non-Site dialectic, as Smithson called it, feels particularly familiar today as our daily lives are continually reshaped by place-defying technologies in communication, information and travel.

With Untitled (plate tectonics), Andy Graydon similarly explores the physical dimensions of location in contrast to its perception. After obtaining the ambient sounds of eleven “natural” art locations in New York – museums, fairs, galleries – Graydon cut the recordings onto unique acetate phonograph records, dubplates, that allow visitors to reshape PROGRAM’s gallery space with sound. Environment is used as a material. Replaying the sounds of these New York institutions as they intermix with the ambient sounds of PROGRAM, space is at once extended and collapsed. Dubplates, for the music industry, are used in mastering studios before the final master. They are meant for temporary use, they deteriorate over time. The sounds recorded on their surface begin to dissolve after about fifty plays.

Untitled (plate tectonics) is accompanied here by Scaffold (Invalidenstrasse 115), an installation piece that uses video-projected light to animate and complicate certain characteristics of the exhibition space’s architecture, suspending it somewhere between architectural and cinematic space.

Artist's statement:

What is a visitor to the Met doing when she views the Greek sculpture garden almost exclusively through the LCD panel of her camera? What kind of experience is being produced? It is a familiar lament that our culture is losing its ability to attend, to look with engagement at art and at everyday experience. But that lament overlooks a compeling fact: the visitor is composing.

In those photos, sounds, or videos, the art and the surrounding space are collapsed together (i.e. onto a picture plane) and rendered plastic, malleable, in a sense modular. Most importantly they are incorporated into the world of the viewer, rather than the reverse. In this sense there are few more democratic gestures in an exhibition than to point a device and make a recording, not to preserve a record of the place, but to impose upon it a unique continuity, a contour of one's own experience; to sculpt with it.

A museum or exhibition space aims to present a coherent itinerary of (largely visual) experience. Sound tends to tell a different story, revealing places and intervals that are disruptive, distracted, intense, or diffuse, but rarely discrete. Indeed, sound abhors discretion. It can only exist through disruption and agitation. Sound is inclusive and immersive: if you hear it, it is vibrating you. This helps to explain the conflicted relationship contemporary art exhibition has had with sound work, in which playing pieces on headphones has become the favored way of taming sound into an ideally discrete sound-object.

With this in mind, Untitled (plate tectonics) works with the exhibition space (both recorded and present) not as a resolved environment for the reception and contemplation of works, but rather as both an impulse (as in electrical energy) and as a material, a moldable substance useful in the creation of other ideas, further experiences, alternate places.

via Program

Christine Hill + Bauhaus

2011-02-15T13:16:00.005+01:00

Christine Hill, Do it yourself bauhaus, 2009.

The needs of the people, not the dictates of luxury.
Hannes Meyer

Do it yourself bauhaus is a project by Christine Hill and Volksboutique commissioned within the exhibition Modell Bauhaus/Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin. This work is based on reviewing the core tenets of the founding of the Bauhaus with how they survive today in contemporary design. Hill does this by critiquing both Bauhaus ideas and their current dilution in mass marketing. This major installation follows her success at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and her 2009 Volksboutique Armory Apothecary at the Armory Show in New York.

Karen Kilimnik + Wright

2011-02-15T12:46:00.007+01:00

Karen Kilimnik, Untitled, 2009, Three postcards with glue and glitter, two parts 10.2 x 15.2 cm each, one part 15.2 x 10.2cm

Larissa Fassler on Zentrum Kreuzberg

2011-02-15T12:16:00.007+01:00

Kotti, 2008
Materials: grey cardboard and glue
Approximate scale: 1 footstep = 3 cm cardboard
Dimensions: 300 x 300 x 135 cm

Kotti is a model representation of the publicly accessible areas of the Zentrum Kreuzberg (ZK) housing estate and its surroundings. Starting once again with the act of walking I have measured this concrete housing estate as well as its front plaza and underground access tunnels in order to construct a third model-like structure that questions the impact of urban planning on communities, and conversely, the impact of communities on planning.

via Larissa Fassler

Elena Bajo "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"

2011-02-15T11:40:00.004+01:00

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The Woodmill, 2010 Plan for a Choreography and performance based on an architectural floor plan for a social rehabilitation center in London, 1968, found in The Woodmill Building.

via Elena Bajo

Olafur Eliasson + Barragán

2011-02-14T15:42:00.003+01:00

Olafur Eliasson
'The Barragán House Kaleidoscope', 2002
kaleidoscope, mixed media
(120 x 120 x 70 cm)

Pedro Reyes + Dieste

2011-02-14T15:34:00.008+01:00

Parque Sinusoidal
MDF model 2001

via Pedro Reyes

Gilbert & George + Barragán

2011-02-14T15:30:00.002+01:00

GILBERT & GEORGE
Photograph of the artist on their visit to Barragán's House, 2002.

via Center for Aesthetic Revolution

Thomas Bayrle + Johnson

2011-02-14T13:59:00.003+01:00

Holz Relief Stadt (Philip Johnson) (Wood Relief City, Philip Johnson), (1999-2000)
A review from Frieze.

Nicolas Moulin + Le Corbusier

2011-02-14T13:34:00.005+01:00

GOLDBARRGOROD, 2010

via Villa Arson

Karina Bisch + Oud

2011-02-14T13:25:00.002+01:00

Karina Bisch
Total recall, 2007
bâche PVC, bois, tissus, toile plastique, papier peint, peinture, toile adhésive
4 x (300 x 730 cm)

Vue d´exposition, Ultramoderne, Espace Paul Wurth, Luxembourg, 2007

Rirkrit Tiravanija + Le Corbusier

2011-02-14T13:10:00.002+01:00

Rirkrit Tiravanija
Untitled (asile flottant)
2010
Bois, métal, t-shirts, buste de mannequins, dessins
Wood, metal, T-shirts, mannequin busts, drawings
Dimensions variables / Variable dimensions

via Chantal Crousel

Anselm Kiefer + Niemeyer

2011-02-14T12:56:00.001+01:00

Lilith 1987-9

Oil, ash and copper wire on canvas
support: 3815 x 5612 x 500 mm support, each: 3815 x 2806 x 50 mm
painting

This horrific vision of urban sprawl was inspired by Kiefer’s visit to Sao Paulo in Brazil. Tangled copper wiring signals the breakdown of communication. The city is engulfed in an apocalyptic haze, which Kiefer created by spreading dust and earth across the painting, then burning parts of its surface. According to Hebrew mythology, Lilith was Adam’s first wife, a seductive and demonic airborne spirit. In Kiefer’s painting, Lilith seems to bring destruction from the air upon Oscar Niemeyer’s modernist buildings.

via Tate Modern

Damian Ortega + Pani, Le Corbusier, Hansen

2011-02-14T12:51:00.002+01:00

Skin. Centro Urbano Presidente Alemán C.U.P.A., 1950, Mario Pani, Mexico City, Mexico 2006

Skin. Przyczolek Grochowski Estate, LCS, 1963, Oskar Hansen, Warsaw, Poland 2007

Skin. L'Unité D'Habitation à Berlin, 1956-1958, Le Corbusier, Berlin, Germany 2007

Ortega’s Skin works belong to a series of sculptures based on modernist residential architecture. Using natural cow leather, he has replicated floor plans of apartments in the Przyczolek Grochowski Estate in Warsaw by Oskar Hansen, Mexico City’s Urban Center President Alemán by architect Mario Pani, and Le Corbusier’s L’Unité d’Habitation in Berlin. The resulting cut-outs are installed as soft hanging sculptures. These residential projects were conceived to replace existing ineffective metropolitan housing with linear, egalitarian structures. Ortega’s malleable figures focus on the formal qualities of the buildings rather than their functional and social aspects and offer a gentle critique of modernism’s promise to transform human settlement.

via Tate Modern

Knut Åsdam + Niemeyer

2011-02-14T12:45:00.003+01:00

Tripoli, 2010, 24 min

Tripoli emphasises the relationship between urban identities, political history and architectural traces through the preserved relics of our recent past. Tripoli in North Lebanon holds the remains of one of the world's most distinctive and ambitious construction projects, a stranded vision in the form of an international market place designed by the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer in 1966. On the outbreak of the civil war in Lebanon in 1975 all the work on the extensive project ceased, and the buildings were never completed. The site is an unfinished monument of an optimistic time in the Middle East, and a historic fantasy, in contrast to the ‘real’ everyday modernism of Tripoli, which rises like a wall of apartment blocks behind. The film is part architectural documentary and part theatrical drama. Tripoli attempts to leave space in the film for a story of violence and the uncanny.

Produced by Knut Åsdam Studio and Bergen Kunsthall

Via Tate Modern

Tobias Zielony + Di Salvo

2011-02-12T11:46:00.003+01:00

Tobias Zielony, Le Vele di Scampia, 2009.

Philippe Cognée + Piano / Rogers

2011-02-11T17:00:00.002+01:00

Philippe Cognée, Beaubourg, 2003 Triptyque Peinture à la cire sur toile marouflée sur contre-plaqué 200 x 469 cm,

Brion Gysin + Piano / Rogers

2011-02-11T16:58:00.002+01:00

Brion Gysin, Le dernier musée, 1977, 1982Agrandissement, planche contact, épreuve sur papier Kodak 54 x 49,6 cm 59,8 x 49,8 cm, © Galerie de France

Yves Bélorgey + Ando

2011-02-11T16:50:00.002+01:00

Rokko Housing 2 (2) Kobe 2009

Graphite on paper

80 x 121 cm (31.5 x 47.64 inch)

Jeff Carter + Gropius

2011-02-11T16:31:00.005+01:00

Untitled #3 (Chicago Tribune Tower) 2010
Modified IKEA products (laminated MDF, fiberboard, paper, aluminum), video monitor, electric stepper motor, microcontroller, electronics, video loop
96” H x 32” W x 62” D

via Jeff Carter (several more Gropius / Ikea morphings)