InForm
Published by
MNSJ Publishing
Designer
Nguyen Huy Hung
Contributor
Andre Pijet Atelier Deshaus Berlin Art Link Bustler Editors Divisare Dominic Bradbury Ian Wallace Nguyen Huy Hung Thomas Schielke
ISSN
1995-1705
Editor’s Note
Welcome back to InForm!
In this month’s issue, we explore the intersections whereby art and architecture overlap, amidst contrasting perspectives under one theme — REFLECTION. REFLECTION refers to throwing back without absorbing, it is an image seen within a shiny surface. REFLECTION means thought, it means consideration, it means consequence. Join us on a journey to see what REFLECTION is in art and architecture, how concept and idea evolve through time: inspiring artists and designers who borrow tools and concepts from each other’s disciplines.
Music
Blossom Pavilion in Shanghai features steel “rocks” and a rooftop flowerbed
MATERIALS: MIRRORED FACADES
Reflecting Nature: An Interview With Doug Aitken
VEILED IN BRILLIANCE: HOW REFLECTIVE FACADES HAVE CHANGED MODERN ARCHITECTURE
A closer look into Invisible Barn by stpmj
SUSPENDED MEMORY
Events: Singapore Elsewhere
Conceptual Artist Dan Graham On How To Use His Radical “Pavilion” On The Met’s Rooftop
MIRROR: A PSYCHOLOGICAL DOOR TO THE OTHERNESS OF SELF
Hall and House in Alguena by Cor & Asociados
opposite page Reflections on glass façade. Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg. Architects: Herzog & de Meuron. Image Š Frank Thiel.
VEILED IN BRILLIANCE:
HOW REFLECTIVE FACADES HAVE CHANGED MODERN ARCHITECTURE
fig. 1, down Glass façade of Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg. Architects: Herzog & de Meuron. Image © Maxim Schulz.
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THOMAS SCHIELKE
1�According to Kenneth Frampton's Critical History of Modern Architecture, Mies said of his Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper proposal: "I placed the glass walls at slight angles to each other to avoid the monotony of over-large glass surfaces. I discovered by working with actual glass models that the important thing is the play of reflections and not the effect of light and shadow as in ordinary buildings". 2� Norman Robert Foster is a British architect whose company, Foster + Partners, maintains an international design practice famous for high-tech architecture.
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Even as modernism promoted the transparency of glass architecture, many within the movement were conscious of the monotony of large glass facades, with even Mies van der Rohe using elements such as his trademark mullions to break up his facades. But in the years since, countless uniform structural glazing skyscrapers have emerged and bored urban citizens. In response to this, unconventional reinterpretations of facades have gained interest. Accompanied by the belief that light and brilliance could help in creating iconic architecture and a better human world, glass and metal have been innovatively transformed to create crystalline images. As a result, the locus of meaning in architecture has shifted from the internal space-form towards the external surface. Celebrating the expressive materiality of transparency and reflective imagery for entire building skins emerged during the early 20th century, when Paul Scheerbart and Bruno Taut envisioned a new glass culture made of “colored glass” “sparkling in the sun,” “crystalline shapes of white glass” which make the “jewel-like architecture shimmer.” Mies van der Rohe absorbed this vision when he discarded the rectangular tower in favor of a free-form glass skin in his proposal for the Glass Skyscaper in Berlin in 1921. 1 In a 1968 interview, Mies explained his skepticism regarding the urban monotony of glass mirror effects: “Because I was using glass, I was anxious to avoid dead surface reflecting too much light, so I broke the facades a little in plan so that light could fall on them at different angles: like crystal, like cut crystal.” Norman Foster 2 materialized this glass dream with his Willis Faber & Dumas Headquarters in Ipswich in 1975 and SOM presented it in its tallest manifestation with the Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai in 2009. Undoubtedly the glass façade at the Elbphilharmonie (see fig. 1) in Hamburg by Herzog & de Meuron refers to the visionary glass culture of Scheerbart, and indirectly to the golden shimmering skin of Berlin’s Philharmonic by Hans Scharoun as well. Inwardly and outwardly curved glass elements distort the perception of the city, water and sky. They build a fresh contrast to the uniform plane glass curtains of the International Style. The environment is not appreciated as a clear mirrored picture, but instead goes through a process of modification and reproduction. Due to the curves of the balconies, the building reflects points or lines of brilliant light streaks. With a blue or diffuse sky the distinctive curves reflect the light as bright lines, similar to the horizontal lines seen in the designs of the automotive industry. Under direct sunlight, bright glossy points appear and evoke a jewellike shimmer. Additionally, the vertical and horizontal convex curves of numerous single glass elements reinforce the shiny distorted reflections of the sky. Overall the curved façade with its printed dot screens evokes a vivid and liquid image, which expresses a close link to the water around. Built upon the historic brick warehouse below, and with its abstract choreography of complex distorted light reflections, the Elbphilharmonie operates as a magical eyecatcher. ESSAY — Veiled in Brilliance
fig. 4, up Walt Disney Concert Hall, 2003, Los Angeles. Architect: Frank Gehry. Image © Gehry Partners, LLP.
fig. 2, down Façade with curved glass elements at Prada Aoyama, 2003, Tokyo. Architects: Herzog & de Meuron. Image © Showcase Tokyo.
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THOMAS SCHIELKE
3�Frank Owen Gehry (February 28, 1929), Canadian-born American architect, residing in Los Angeles. A number of his buildings, including his private residence, have become world-renowned attractions. His works are cited as being among the most important works of contemporary architecture in the 2010 World Architecture Survey.
The precursor to the Elbphilharmonie, which first showcased Herzog & de Meuron's desire to transform the mirror effects of modernist glass skyscrapers, was the Prada Epicenter in Tokyo, completed in 2003 (see fig. 2). The glazing shell consists mainly of rhombus-shaped elements, but selected parts create distinct distorted reflections due to the convex exterior shapes of the glass — comparable to a contact lens resting on the façade. The intriguing imagery of brilliant reflections on transparent glass facades is fortunately not limited to those outside the building; it also offers interesting views for those inside. However, for closed exhibition or concert halls, the concept of veiling an entire building with brilliant reflective effects has been adapted with other shimmering panels. The American architect Frank Gehry 3 transferred this aesthetic of brilliance from glass to metal with the titanium cladding of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in 1997 (see fig. 3). While the connotations range from a ship for the larger form to fish scales regarding the reflective panels, the building as a whole has turned into an urban jewel that kicked off numerous urban redevelopments with its iconic signature. Many an aspiring metropolis assumes that the structural form is the key successful factor in “Bilbao effect.” However, with the sparkling light qualities of the titanium sheets and its changing appearance, Frank Gehry has not only brought a dynamic composition of forms to Bilbao but reinforced his design with a distinctive, dynamic image which varies with every cloud and sunbeam. Though they are less than half a millimeter thick, the titanium sheets evoke an interesting, almost corrugatedtactile dressing — an association which the New York Times critic Herbert Muschamp connected with Marilyn Monroe: “Frank Gehry’s new Guggenheim Museum is a shimmering, Looney tunes, post-industrial, posteverything burst of American optimism wrapped in titanium (...) The building is the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe.” With the Walt Disney Concert Hall, opened in 2003, the lustrous gesture subsequently arrived in the glamorous Hollywood scenery (see fig. 4).
fig. 3, right Reflections on titanium façade at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 1997. Architect: Frank Gehry. Photography: Thomas Mayer. Image © ERCO.
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ESSAY — Veiled in Brilliance
fig. 5, up Aluminium discs at Selfridges Birmingham, 2003. Architects: Amanda Levete and Jan Kaplicky (Future Systems). Image © Ken Lee.
fig. 6, down Messe Basel - New Hall, 2013, Basel. Architects: Herzog & de Meuron. Image © Aron Lorincz.
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THOMAS SCHIELKE
Later Paul Andreu covered the monumental dome of the National Grand Theatre of China with a shiny titanium skin and heightened the effect with a surrounding reflecting pool to stand out against the nearby ancient red walls of the Forbidden City. But continuous glossy skins do not present the only option for sparkling jewels in the city. The play of elegant veils in fashion and shiny cladding in architecture combined in a Paco Rabanne dress for a British retail temple. Future Systems stylishly covered the Selfridges Birmingham department store, opened in 2003, with a dense mesh of 16,000 anodized aluminium discs (see fig. 5). The store was able to avoid attaching any logos to the building due to the fact that the building itself was turned into a sign. Its sensuality immediately spurred the marketing world to utilize the sensational setting for advertisements. The glistening net creates a fascinating feeling for scale: Small discs generate a haptic, human feeling while the overall form offers hardly any clues about the building's number of stories or size. The diffuse reflections of the façade cladding leads to an abstract transformed image, which is primarily determined by the brightness and colour of the sky and neglects any clear mirror effects of the neighborhood. In contrast to the shimmering disc dress at Birmingham, the stretched metal gesture at Messe Basel New Hall by Herzog & de Meuron introduces a linear interpretation of light reflections (see fig. 6). The building's twisting bands of aluminum avoid the well-known monotony of windowless exhibition halls. The homogeneous but stretched aluminum modulates the building in a light way. When oriented towards the sky, the surface gives brightness to the building which is set in stark contrast to the dark perforations and areas where the bands leans toward the ground.
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ESSAY — Veiled in Brilliance
fig. 7, left Aluminum sunshades at South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, Adelaide. Architects: Woods Bagot. "South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute" by Jackstarshaker is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Image Š WikiArquitectura.
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THOMAS SCHIELKE
4�Woods Bagot is a global architectural and consulting practice that was founded in Australia. It specialises in the design and planning of buildings across a wide variety of sectors and disciplines, including aviation and transport, education, science and health, lifestyle, sport and the workplace. 5�International Style, a major architectural style that developed in the 1920s and 1930s and strongly related to Modernism and Modern architecture. The style is characterized by an emphasis on volume over mass, the use of lightweight, massproduced, industrial materials, rejection of all ornament and color, repetitive modular forms, and the use of flat surfaces, typically alternating with areas of glass.
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For an Australian science facility the veil has even fulfilled the task of protecting against the harsh sunlight. The architects Woods Bagot 4 erected an urban icon with enveloping the entire building with aluminum sunshades, each individually computer modeled, for the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute in Adelaide (see fig. 7). Some forms of sparkling reflective patterns are even able to initiate political discussions and influence the names of buildings. The “Fernsehturm Berlin” is an excellent example of this, with its reflection in the form of a cross emanating from the sphere. Built in 1969, the socialist and atheist party of the German Democratic Republic erected the tower to resemble the Russian satellite Sputnik. Located in the historic center of former East Germany next to a medieval church, the tall tower was intended as a political statement addressing the deconstruction of the old city. But the selection of pyramidal stainless steel panels led to an unintended effect: The reflections of the sun create a clearly visible cross pattern on the sphere. Thereby, the communist regime had accidentally installed a highly visible Christian symbol in an ostensibly atheist environment. Hence, the people in Berlin nicknamed the lighting effect the “Pope's revenge.” These strategies with shimmering veils have significantly increased the relevance of the surface as a carrier for the meaning of a building. The International Style 5 has come to a point in façade design where the uniformity of mirroring cubes has begun to erode a sense of human scale. Consequently, concave and convex building forms, reflective curved façade elements, or a mixture of the two, have opened another set of options, generating more multifaceted images for the city. Furthermore, the interest in complex reflection patterns has swept aside brutalism with its raw concrete dualism of dark voids and light surfaces. These shimmering facades have also superseded Kahn's monumentality, where the material’s purpose is primarily to cast a shadow. Neither shadows nor simple mirror effects seem to evoke enough attraction for our spectacle-oriented society today. Therefore, new landmarks will continue to reach for innovative combinations of material and form to create brilliant veils and a bright urban future.
ESSAY — Veiled in Brilliance
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Reflecting Nature: An Interview with Doug Aitken
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INTERVIEW — Doug Aitken
This Spring, American artist and filmmaker Doug Aitken contributed his site-specific architectural intervention ‘Mirage’ (featured from page to) to the group exhibition DesertX, which took place in California’s Coachella Valley. Exhibited projects by established and emerging artists amplified and articulated global and local issues—ranging from climate change to tribal culture to immigration—in this pristine desert setting. We caught up with Aitken in L.A. to discuss his piece for the exhibition, as well as his wider artistic engagement with natural environments and processes, and the tradition of Land Art in which it is embedded.
this page Mirage, Desert X installation view, 2017.
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BERLIN ART LINK
‘Mirage’ for the recent DesertX exhibition uses the architectural language of the Wild West to reflect nature back to visitors, as a critique of the idea of conquest and the fiction of uninhabited natural settings. How do you employ architecture as a tool in your works?
For me, the work ‘Mirage’ was a kind of gradual evolution of different projects, looking at the idea of reflectivity, the idea of bringing the viewer into the work and creating an encounter that was happening in real time that wasn’t necessarily authored. And I think that also comes back to the work itself as a structure. I thought a lot about the architecture that we don’t see and the experiences that we don’t record and I think, in a country like America, you find yourself constantly moving between point A and point B, but the space in between is often not really noted. In ‘Mirage’, I wanted to take the form of suburban house, that type of repetitious typology, and I wanted to focus on it. Instead of making it dynamic and unique, I wanted to use the most mundane vessel for this project. So, we took this one story suburban home and I really wanted to drain the blood out of it. And to reduce it so that it no longer had a history, occupants, possessions, materialism, but only the form was left. Then, to take that form and kind of rework it, to pull it out of the kind of repetitious area that you’d find it in and isolate it. To make the work, I really needed a location with a view. I needed a place that wasn’t sublimely natural, but was instead in this twilight zone of development and raw nature. The location is this kind of boulder stream hillside in the desert. It’s very primal, but overlooks this valley of development, this kind of grid of city lights. And past that lies the desert, where you just see sandstorms and bare mountains. I wanted to really occupy the space, I wanted it to be a work that existed in a quite existential way, removed from its surroundings. How did this manifest in the context of the ‘DesertX’ exhibition?
It became a living sculpture. A living installation. It’s changing continuously, from dawn to dusk to night, and the landscape around it becomes the work. The exterior of the sculpture is cloud and entirely mirror; the interior is made of 8 rooms and every room is also completely mirrored. It’s a kind of labyrinth. We designed it in a way where the aspect ratio was very specific for the different views and perspectives that you find outside. But there’s also moments that are disorienting or almost violent in their multiplicity of views, where you reflect infinitely. It becomes like a particle excelerator, in a way. I saw it as a time piece and an encounter that the viewer goes to, but then merges with and almost becomes it. Within that experience, there’s a compression of the exterior landscape and you. I think, in a lot of ways, the piece ends up being a quite abstract experience.
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INTERVIEW — Dan Graham
It’s an unusual encounter in that the architecture has no windows or doors: it’s just open to the elements. We were there filming and there was a very intense sandstorm that from the north and you could just feel the granular wind gusting through the corridors of the house, almost rubbing on your skin. It was so interesting being in the space in a condition like that, and seeing these elements invading and permeating the experience. What is your relationship to the art historical tradition of Land Art? How might this movement be updated in contemporary art practices?
I think when we look at a lot of the trajectory of Land Art from the 60s and 70s, it’s often quite abstract. It uses geometric shapes and forms, such as in ‘Lighting Fields’ or ‘Double Negative’ or ‘Spiral Jetty’. And that has a certain quality within the landscape, looking at monumental patterns and geometry. But ‘Mirage’ is very different because the form of this is very surreal. I noticed people encountering it have very little resistance because the shape is so familiar. Everybody’s been inside of a house like this before. But inside all of the familiar things are erased; only the forms and the dimensions are retained.
this page Mirage, Desert X Underwater Pavilion, installation view, Avalon, California, 2016.
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BERLIN ART LINK
Your recent project ‘Underwater Pavilions’ off the coast of Catalina Island is co-presented by Parley for the Oceans. Tell us about this project. How do you collaborate with organizations to raise awareness about the state of the oceans?
‘Underwater Pavilions’ touched on some similar subjects. With both ‘Underwater Pavilions’ and ‘Mirage’, I was interested in not only making works that were systemic, but also making works that were successions outside of the gallery system or museum environment. I was restless with this idea of the confinement of the architecture of the current cultural system. The way America moves is that it kind of continuously moves West and then stops about 1/2 a mile from here. That demarcation line is just geographic. I found myself continuously going out to that line. That’s my border. It’s at the edge of the city where it meets the coast and there’s just the horizon. What the desert was to the Land Artists in the 70s, maybe that horizon out there is a space that can really be addressed. When we see that 70% of the earth is underwater, we realize that this huge topography is there that we know so little about. Is it possible to create an artwork that creates an aperture into that? That was the beginning of the ‘Underwater Pavilions’ idea. The idea was quite clear, but it was almost impossible to figure out how to do it. It was such a conundrum. Who do you ask to use part of the Pacific? Do you get a permit? Do you have to do paperwork? Do you need insurance? Can you just do it yourself? There was nowhere to go or no person to really ask about this. We wanted to make 3 pavilions that would float 10-30 feet underneath the ocean’s surface. They were tethered to the ocean floor. We wanted them to be a combination of a rough aggregate surface that sea life could cling to and they could become a living ecosystem, and then also mirrored surfaces. So they would kind of kaleidoscope the sun coming through the surface, the underwater landscape and kind of pour these into these large scale encounters or abstractions. One thing led to another and we met this ocean conservation group, Parley for the Oceans. It was a really great and fortuitous dialogue. I think Parley for the Oceans really valued the collaboration for an artwork that was driven by ideas. This was a way to create a collaboration between culture and contemporary art, and oceanographers and marine awareness associations. For all of us, one of the things that was a collective belief was the interest in seeing if this project could create a door to the ocean. To visit this work, you have to go under the ocean; you have to literally swim at a minimum or dive to deeper levels to encounter these works.
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INTERVIEW — Dan Graham
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BERLIN ART LINK
opposite page Underwater Pavilion, installation view, Avalon, California, 2016.
Why is it important to connect with these more natural phenomenon?
I think for the last decade we’ve been fed this idea of synthetic and virtual reality dominating. I actually find the opposite to be true: I find there’s a return to the real. I think for many people there’s an intense desire and a reawakening to natural systems and the physical world. We’re looking around at the tactile things. For me, the first time I dove the Underwater Pavilions, I’ve actually never had a more hallucinatory experience in my life. It was November and the ocean was cold and it was windy and there was a kelp bed, and you’re kind of climbing under this kelp bed under the ocean. When I think about almost every art viewing experience I’ve had, I’ve either been sitting or standing and there’s a floor underneath me. Then, all of a sudden you find yourself in slow motion, horizontally, climbing through space, through this dark blue void. You’re seeing clues, you’re seeing some huge kelp forest in the distance that you could meander through. As you’re moving through this world, you can see this hexagonal object in the distance and you kind of move towards it, and as you approach you’re almost flying through this subconscious space, yet it’s so real. You could pick up a barnacle encrusted rock and slice your finger in a second. That idea, that immediacy and that connection back to reality, was very unusual. I think in a lot of ways, my personal interest is in seeing art create systems, living systems. Or seeing art that is continuously in flux and is reinventing itself with or without us. One inescapable system for us is time: the idea that an artwork can live in that continuum and not be frozen is very compelling.
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INTERVIEW — Dan Graham
SLAIRETAM SEDACAF DERORRIM
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tnecer ni noitulover teiuq a neeb sah ereTh ruo parw ot esu ew taht slairetam eht ni sraey evah y golonhcet dna noitanigami htoB .semoh sreyal ni eciohc fo evaw wen elohw a delleporp tyitnedi draw tuo eht enfied taht sgnitaoc dna tsom eht fo enO .sesuoh deviecnoc ylhserf fo hsup siht fo sralpmexe cimanyd dna gnitanicsaf laitnediser fo oiloft rop y ru tnec-ts12 a sdrawot .gnidliub derorrim eht si sedacaf neeb evah secafrus derorrim ,esruoc fO senalp gniraos eht nopu thgis ecalpnommoc a sreparcskys tyic dna sgnidliub ecffio nabru fo ot desu llew osla era eW .won emit emos rof nihtiw ssalg derorrim gnizilitu fo noiton eht eht esaercni ,thgil etalucric pleh ot emoh eht fo tnemele na dda dna ecaps fo noitpecrep era stcetihcra y raropmetnoc won tuB .amard eht ot sedacaf derorrim gnignirb ylgnisaercni .llew sa secnediser fo sroiret xe DOMINIC BRADBURY
MATERIALS MIRRORED FACADES
There has been a quiet revolution in recent years in the materials that we use to wrap our homes. Both imagination and technology have propelled a whole new wave of choice in layers and coatings that define the outward identity of freshly conceived houses. One of the most fascinating and dynamic exemplars of this push towards a 21st-century portfolio of residential facades is the mirrored building. Of course, mirrored surfaces have been a commonplace sight upon the soaring planes of urban office buildings and city skyscrapers for some time now. We are also well used to the notion of utilizing mirrored glass within the home to help circulate light, increase the perception of space and add an element of drama. But now contemporary architects are increasingly bringing mirrored facades to the exteriors of residences as well.
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MATERIALS
These mirrored surfaces offer many subtle delights and intricacies, whether in a countryside or urban setting. They establish a sense of movement and interaction, mirroring the energy of the surroundings and capturing the sway of trees and shifting shapes and shadows as the sun and clouds progress across the sky. These reflections help a building to blend in with its surroundings in the form of mirrored camouflage rather than shouting out its architectural presence. To achieve this look, architects from the following three projects have explored a number of materials like stainless steel, ceramic, and aluminized polyester film in an innovative way to refocus the visual experience of a building or a installation back to its environmental surrounds.
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This Is Name
Blossom Pavilion in Shanghai features steel “rocks”
and a rooftop flowerbed this page reflective column made from stainless steel
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MATERIALS — Stainless Steel
Architects Atelier Deshaus Site No.570 West Huaihai Road, Shanghai, China Location 31°11'52.7"N 121°25'27.0"E Design Team Liu Yichun + Wang Longhai + Ding Jieru Area 96.0 sqm Photographs Chen Hao—Zhou Dingqi Cooperation Artist Zhan Wang Structure Design Zhang Zhun Year 2015
this page reflection on rough surface
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ATELIER DESHAUS
this page reflection on smooth surface
Blossom Pavilion is a cooperative spatial device with artist Zhan Wang, which is also one of the spatial art pieces project of Shanghai Urban Space Art Season 2015 1+1 (artist + architect). Zhan Wang’s representive project is his rockery sculpture made by stainless steel. The most recent investigate, casted stainless steel, leave a deeply impression on me. Artist leaves a flat, thin and polished stainless steel piece on natural ground or other texture. Then carefully cast the texture on stainless steel by soft packaged hammer. In this way, an industrial material is left with nature information and artificial trace, which is also represented by the specific material behavior. Supporting and coverage is human being’s most primitive spatial construction form, which could shelter oneself from suffering weather conditions. In the evolution of mankind construction, the principle is tending to be rational and scientific. Engineering gradually become the core of construction technique. The structure of Blossom Pavilion has been scrupulously calculated. The overall overage area is 12metres plus 8 metres, which consist of two types of thickness (8mm and 14mm) steel plates in the 800x800mm grid according
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next spread side view of the pavilion
to the allowable stress. The height of 14mm thickness cloud-shape ribs above the steel plate stay a range of 50-200mm, which shaped as a natural topographic slope. The chambers among the ribs were used as the pots for flowers on the roof of Blossom Pavilion. The steel plate is supported by 6 places’ single or A-shape solid steel columns, witch size at 60X60mm. A Mies style minimalism construction has been formed like a picture on page 30 — 31. The most rational structure mechanics is not the principle when architect decide where to put the supporting point. A space divided by ‘sliced rockery’ is the main picture in mind. As the concept of artist treat stainless steel slice, the rockery spatial concept has been brought in into engineering supporting structures. Architect divided and translated artist’s stainless-steelrockery sculpture into a space with rockery concept. Artist chose the hill stone cast texture steel as the façade of sliced side. The surrounding plants and trees has been engaged into the Blossom Pavilion with this method. Because of the involved artist, architect engaged with primitive spatial rhetoric by a contemporary method.
MATERIALS — Stainless Steel
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ATELIER DESHAUS
this spread roof diagram
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MATERIALS — Stainless Steel
this spread elevation
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ATELIER DESHAUS
next spread ground level plan
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MATERIALS — Stainless Steel
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MATERIALS — Stainless Steel
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This Is Name
Music Hall and House in Algueña by Cor & Asociados
this page iridescent facade of the multipurpose hall at sunset
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MATERIALS — Ceramic
Architects Cor & Asociados—Miguel Rodenas + Jesús Olivares Client Town Council of Algueña Site Algueña, Alicante, Spain Location 38º 20’ 24.00” N 1º 00’ 28.06” W Area 715 sqm Photographs David Frutos
opposite page front elevation
The memory of existing architecture and the opportunity of a new program
Algueña is a small village in the interior of Alicante County, with a population of two thousand and an economy based in agriculture and marble industries. We were asked for a building able to bring together all the activities related to music and culture that took place in the village, and also promoting its cultural future. We were commissioned to search for an opportunity, articulate it and carry it out. Under these circumstances, that also comprised the definition of an extensive musical schedule of activities and a maximum budget of 562.800 €, we proposed in a first phase the rehabilitation of old Guardia Civil’s quarter that was in disuse since the 80s. That allowed us to have a surface area of 670 m2 that we only had to adequate, and the construction on a new Auditorium of 350m2 and 230 seats. In a second phase, we proposed the construction of a park
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this page back elevation
with an open-air auditorium that will join the village and its zone of future urban development. The definition of the architectural program is the opportunity in this project. Sometimes, as in this case, the decisions of the architects have to do more with the “building of an opportunity” and the creation of a dense and appropriate schedule of activities for the village, than strictly with the discipline, the aesthetics, the materiality, the form... The responsibility in the approach and the impossibility of failing are important parameters in this kind of villages, where the opportunities come rarely, and there’s no possibility of increasing the budget. That’s why it is very important to construct a complex reality linked closely with the village, and auditing the process with all the agents and citizens involved. The intervention is located in the west entrance to the village, near from classical local wineries, in a city limit that the new urbanistic plan will develop around this plot. We propose to reserve a green zone beside the building, to
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DIVISARE
develop in second phase an open-air auditorium and a garden with jacarandas, that will have enough entity to separate the new urbanistic development of the existing one, and generating a joining place and giving it ambiental quality. Besides, in the plot exits a building of the 60s, an old Guardia Civil quarters, that is in disuse from years and that has a load-bearing wall structure in good state of maintenance. And its shaped in U with an interesting central courtyard for this architectural program. We propose to rehabilitate it for developing that program. The new construction is separated from the old by new adapted stairs that are enclosed in glass boxes lighted from overhead, that try to add fragility to the rotundness of the whole. The multipurpose hall houses 230 seats, these seats are movable and the installations are able to accommodate different kind of functions, from a concert to a new year’s eve party, that’s why it also houses a warehouse where organize all these elements that allow use change.
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The central courtyard is designed to house the rehearsals of the music band in open-air, or any other kind of functions as award giving parties, etc. without any fixed element. Moreover, it’s designed together with the back courtyard, in which we propose to develop another open-air hall. The intervention has a great potential to be used and we propose more for less. In the existing building we propose the rehabilitation without formal changes. Simply recovering all the old constructive techniques and turning them white with different grades of shine with the intention of generating tension between what the users remember about the building and what it is now, we search for surprise perceptions and the generation of a new surface. Instead the new hall is a blind box, a strange element because of its shape and dimensions. To emphasize this sensation we propose a cladding that vibrates and shines with a pearly-iridescent material.
MATERIALS — Ceramic
The generation of a “low cost” landmark: vibration and brightness
The ceramic: pearly and iridescent
Politicians demanded the generation of a building that could be used as a brand, able to arise as a recognizable landmark in the village, where doesn’t exist any exempt contemporary building able to act as a brand. The generation of this recognizable landmark, architecturally speaking, usually has to do with expensive budgets, amazing materials and sculptured shapes. However, this project generates this landmark with a low cost solution relying on two concepts, one concerns “psychology of perception” and uses vibration and brightness, and the other concerns shape and uses the rotund appearance with proportions similar to its industrial landscape. Brand architecture is used in big cities to offer a recognizable image that can be easily remembered and associated to a city and its values. Using this kind of marketing at village level has to be reflected, because they only need a building for a determinate program. Here it allows starting sketching a strategy to reactivate the exterior image of the village, and helping strengthen it for the imminent economical change it’s immersed.
The use of a ceramic surfacing with pearly and iridescent finishing responds the intention of generating a vibrant volume in constant change, due to lighting changes or observatory movements, this solution makes the building vibrate, changing its color, saturation and profundity. The bet on this material, made “exnovo” for this building, with the use of existing techniques of firing, vitrifying and metals deposition, give this appearance and respond to the necessity of not creating a tectonic or shape solution, but a perceptive one. This technique is based on a porcelain base material that resists frost and is guaranteed in exterior. Each of these plates is pressed in dry and is fired 3 times: first of them at 950ºC to biscuit it, second to fire the white enamel and vitrifying the biscuit at 1180ºC in rapid circle, and third that obtains the iridescent-pearly finishing or the metal reflections at 780ºC approximately.
this page, top left original edifice with murals painted into the door jambs and lintels
this page, top right iridescent facade responds to changing lighting and cloud conditions
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The opportunity of the project is the creation of an architectural program audited with the village.
The music as social enhancer in a village.
For many years music is an important part of the culture in Algueña. This building is the opportunity to bring together in a same space all the activities that are spread through the village. The program departs form music realm and we lead it to a more indeterminate situation, linked to multipurpose uses. After doing the work of defining the architectural programs, that we developed in multiple meetings with different agents and citizens, the building houses a wide range of activities form music lessons, rehearsals and concerts of the municipal music band, the “rondalla” and choir, lessons and performances of the regional dance group, the “dolçaina and tabalet” group, rock bands, composition workshops and electronic music lessons; to exhibition rooms, conference rooms, assembly rooms, place to hold popular feasts, and even a municipal warehouse.
Music bands are a great valencian tradition because in almost every village and town it exists at least one of these musical groups. The musical quality of these bands is recognized around the world, some of them reaching more than 125 members. These groups are not only cultural entities but also social, with a high degree of participation in the village that goes far beyond the music and concerns social integration, formation and group work. Algueña’s band is a good example of this. Each event or concert, and even the rehearsals are followed by the people; not only the results (concerts) are appreciated but also the process (rehearsals, auditions, lessons, meetings) are shared. As an example, as they have few cultural events, people assists to weekly band rehearsals. As a result, in the Comunidad Valenciana exists a network of bands and music centers that are the birthplace of internationally prestigious musicians. This encouraged the creation in 1968 of the Musical Societies Federation of the Comunidad Valenciana. Its aim is to promote and spread the love, teaching and practice of music and enhancing associationism and allowing society a mean of cultural development. In Europe, the Comunidad Valenciana is the region where more music bands exist with Austria and Holland.
this page, top left entrance to courtyard from original building
this page, top right elevated platform for stage
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The historical marc of the building. Working with collective memories.
When you decide to work in an existing building with a profound historical mark, so profound as can be in a Guardia Civil quarter and checkpoint, it’s commonly assumed that one of the challenges of the project will be erasing that historical mark. To do so we developed with the Art Agency “La Ballena Imantada”, directed by Luisa Martí, a social and artistic event in the building: “60 glances” whose objective was to take 60 artists paint during a day each one of the jambs and lintels of the doors and windows. We generated a “transcendent social act” that brought together more than 500 people around the building among artists, musicians, spectators, familiars... allowing us to show the building while still in construction and start to weave a consensus atmosphere between the citizenship, detaching authorship and leave the building up to its future users. This work concerning sociology and anthropology is vital in this project to provoke a shift in the collective memories.
this page segmented acoustical panels gradually arc towards the center of the hall
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this page, middle left model of the music hall and house
this page, bottom construction
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MATERIALS — Aluminized Polyester Film
Architects stpmj Client UC Berkeley, Sagehen Creek Field Station Site Sagehen Creek Field Station, Truckee, CA Location 39°25'56.3"N 120°14'27.7"W Project Team Seung Teak Lee + Mi Jung Lim + Andrew Ma Area 6.7 sqm Structural Engineering Sunghwa Han, PE, SE, LEED AP Construction Dan Sayler + stpmj Year June 2015
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A straightforward expression of integrating architecture and nature, the Invisible Barn by New York design practice stpmj blends seamlessly into the surroundings of Socrates Sculpture Park.
Invisible Barn is a site-specific design proposal that re-contextualizes the landscape of the Socrates Sculpture Park by projecting the landscape on the structural proposition. A barn shaped-wooden structure is sheeted with reflective film on its surfaces. This mirrorfinished folly is placed in the middle of the grove and reflects its surrounding environment: different species of trees and plants, sky, ground and the seasonal changes of the site. The reflection of the folly within its enclosed grove allows the structure to smoothly assimilate into the nature. The incisions that penetrate through the folly allow visitors to maneuver in, out, and around the structure. Invisible Barn is a folly
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that loses its man-made architectural presence in nature but adds novel experience and interaction to the users. Invisible Barn is placed in the core of the grove which lies on the passageway of the Socrates Sculpture Park from the South Entrance. Around the circumference of the grove there are a dozen of birch trees in similar size and equal spacing from one another. Due to the similarity of its size and placement of the trees, the projection on the mirrored surface is similar to what people would see without the folly. The visual illusion that blurs the perceptual boundary between the folly and the site, allows the folly to be disappeared and invisible in nature, reconstructing the landscape of the site.
MATERIALS — Aluminized Polyester Film
The barn is shaped as a skinny and long parallelogram to elude the dense trees. The beveled folly has openings with various sizes and depths that connote windows and doors. These solid and void on the folly’s envelope, reflective film and plywood-framed opening, accentuate the openings. This creates a visual trick that the framed openings are floating on air in the grove. Through these apertures visitors perceive the subtle differences between the real and the mirrored landscape, understanding the depth of the grove and other art installations over the site. The apertures may suggest viewing frames, passages, and benches and visitors are intended to interact physically and visually with them. This simple structure is comprised of 2×4 wood studs and sheathing where the mylar mirror film is surfaced. Wood framed piece is connected to pressure treated wood
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pier on concrete footing buried underground. A hybrid construction method with on and off-site is suggested. Prefabricated walls, floors and plywood opening frames can be moved by two or three people onto the site where the components are assembled. At the intersections between sculpture and architecture, Invisible Barn loses its architectural shape in nature but encourages visitors to interact with it through overlapping in materials and building techniques between the two disciplines. As a static structure, the folly uses its materiality and the site context to draw a new scene derived from the existing landscape. As people begin to move away, toward and within the folly, the users will slowly recognize a space within the grove that reflects, mirrors, and animates the landscape of the park.
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this page, top model of the barn
opposite page exterior view in summer this page, bottom exterior view in winter
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Mylar Wrapped ½" Plywood Sheating, TYP. Mylar Minnorsheeding (5mm) / Nielsen Enterprises
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Wall Framing Shown in dash See dwg A—202/04
2x4 Sidus @ 16" O.C., TYP. (2) 2x4 Wood Column 2x4 Bottom Plate
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opposite page Caravaggio, Narcissus, 1597—1599.
MIRROR :
A PSYCHOLOGICAL DOOR TO THE OTHERNESS OF SELF
fig. 1, left Caravaggio, Narcissus, 1597—1599. fig. 2, down Nicolas Poussin, Echo and Narcissus, 1630.
fig. 3, down John William Waterhouse, Echo and Narcissus, 1903.
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1�Volcanic glass. 2�Today Turkey. 3�Polished copper mirrors in Mesopotamia from 4000 BC and Egypt from 3000 BC, polished stone mirrors in central and South America from 2000 BC, polished bronze mirrors in China from 2000 BC. Glass mirrors coated with metal were produced in today’s Lebanon in the first century AC. In Italy glass mirrors coated with the gold fakes were crafted in the first century AC. From 11th century clear glass mirrors were crafted in Moorish Spain. In early Renaissance in Europe glass mirrors coated with tin-mercury amalgam were produced. 4�Justus von Liebig in 1835 invented silver-glass mirror. 5�Leon Battista Alberti (1404—1472) was an Italian author, artist, and architect, author of the “Traité de la Peinture.” 6�Sigmund Freud (1856—1939), was an Austrian psychiatrist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan ( 1901— 1981), was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. 7�This process was described in 1899 by Paul Näcke (1851—1913), German psychiatrist and criminologist. He introduced to the psychology the concept of Narcissism. 8�Two various interpretations of this myth exists in Greek sources. One is told by Parthenius of Nicaea in Bithynia a Greek grammarian and poet, and the other by Pausanias a Greek traveller and geographer of the 2nd century AD. 9�Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC—AD 17 or 18), Roman poet known as Ovid who wrote about love, seduction, and mythological transformation. 10�Tiresias was a blind prophet from Thebes. 11�Nemesis is the Greek goddess of retribution. 12�Oscar Wilde “The Disciple,” Stendhal “The Red and the Black,” Dostoyevsky “The Double.”
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Mirror as a charming and mysterious object begun to be used by humans approximately from the beginning of six thousands years BC. The first traces of the object used as mirror were made from the obsidian, 1 which were found in Anatolia. 2 Besides obsidian another materials were used for production of these reflecting reality commodities. 3 The mirror as we know it today appeared in the first part of nineteenth century. 4 Human’s curiosity evolved around the mirror’s particular abilities to reflect anything what was placed in front of it. This mirror’s specific quality helped Alberti 5 to establish the principles of perspective. At the early stage of mirror’s popularity the fact of owning one was considered as a luxury and indicated also the social status of the owner. Due to the mirrors’ intriguing capacities to imitate reality, people have developed the pleasure in discovering secret parts of their own bodies, which they would not be able to see otherwise. The taste of personal appearance and representation has developed, what was in particular advantage to the feminine part of the society. The mirror quickly became a utility of the first necessity as a means of personal assurance of oneself. With the mirror’s growing popularity the possibilities of psychological consequences of looking at oneself reflected image inspired scholars to do the studies of its potential effects and explore these issues psychoanalytically: 6 in particular, the various theories concerning the allocation of libido named Narcissism.7 The first and the most known example of the disastrous consequences of over exaggerated admiration of oneself mirrored reflection was Narcissus (see fig. 1). His story was propagated in various literary sources going back as far as the Greek mythology. There are three different variants of the Narcissus’s tale.8 However, the Ovid’s’ 9 version of Narcissus story described in his Roman epic “Metamorphosis” is probably the most popularized account of this unfortunate adventure. In Ovid’s tale Narcissus is the son of the Nymph Liriope and the river god Cephisus. The baby from the beginning was of extreme beauty. When his mother wandering about her son’s future went to see Teiresias, 10 he told her that Narcissus would live as long as he would never know himself. When Narcissus was sixteen, the nymph Echo falls in love with him. Narcissus rejected her love. Heartbroken nymph suffers an enormous pain and she slowly disappears to the point that finally only her voice stays alive. The goddess Nemesis 11 touched by her tragedy decided to punish Narcissus making him falling in love with his own reflection in the pool. Enable to fulfill his desires Narcissus finally dies. It is sad but deeply meaningful myth. Based on this story the meaning of the word Narcissism entered to the Western history as an overstated admiration of self, leading to the egocentric behavior of an individual. Narcissus’s misfortune inspired artists since the early stages of the Western cultural development. Writers, 12 poets, sculptors, and painters nourished their creativities on Narcissus tragedy. ESSAY — Mirror: A Psychological Door
fig. 4.1, right Jan van Eyck, Potrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife, 1434. fig 4.2, down A close-up on The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434.
fig. 6, down Victor Brauner, Self-portrait with a Plucked Eye, 1931.
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13�Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571—1610), Italian Baroque painter working in Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicily. 14�Jan van Eyck or Johannes de Eyck (1395—144 1), Early Netherlandish painter from Bruges. Considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century. 15�Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (1599—1660), Spanish Baroque painter in the court of King Philip IV. 16�It is still debatable if the painter intention was to paint his figure as a witness of the marriage ceremony or just something else. 17�Victor Brauner (1903—1966), Romanian Jewish Surrealist painter 18�Some time later he lost exactly the same eye in the bar fight.
fig. 7, down Francis Bacon, Self Portrait, 1971.
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The various interpretations of this original story are not always exact. The painterly interpretations of this myth including the Acadian surroundings were the most successfully depicted by Nicolas Poussin (see fig. 2) and John William Waterhouse (see fig. 3). They are typically literary interpretations of this tale. Caravaggio’s 13 version is completely different from the previous two artists, because the painter focused on the psychological aspect of it and more personal approach to it. In order to emphasize this, Caravaggio put on Narcissus a dress from his own epoch and not the mythological one. Caravaggio was not the only one who found out that there is much more in this story than just a fascinating myth. The tale is interesting because it is touching the psychological aspects related to the human perception of reflected reality. The painters as Van Eyck 14 and Velázquez 15 treated the psychological aspect of mirror reflection in particular to them respective way. Van Eyck in his painting titled “Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife” (see fig. 4), intricate the space of the canvas by depicting the curved mirror in the central middle space of his artwork. The mirror’s particular optics reflect the entire space visible from its position on the wall including the backsides of the portrayed couple and the people present in front of them including the artist himself. 16 The reason for the presence of the curved mirror might be the artist’s desire to create three-dimensional space on flat canvas, what would permit him to join intellectually the entire space visible from all sides. Velázquez in his painting titled “Las Meninas or The Family of Philip IV” (see fig. 5) aborts the aspects of psychological space created by the presence of the mirror in the similar way as Van Eyck did, but reverses the importance of the artist’s presence in the picture to highlight the Narcissist individuality. The presence of the flat mirror in the middle of the painting with almost perfectly depicted faces of the Queen and the King complete the three-dimensionality of the space visible through the Royal eyes. It suggests that Velazquez’s underlines his own importance as a painter in the eyes of Queen and King. The perception of the psychological space created by the mirror’s reflection was always intriguing to many artists and each of them had a particular way to deal with it. These issues have been explored a lot in the art of self-portraiture. The self-portraiture art in its essence is nothing more than a psychological reflection of not always objective image of the artist and his personality. Any kind of portraiture projects artist’s Narcissist attitude. Furthermore, any kind of portraiture is nothing else than reflection of the Narcissist idealistic perception of the portrayed self. It is interesting to see how the artists perceive their own reflection in the mirror and transform it on the canvas. In just few examples it is possible to review how various artists deal with it. It is evident in Victor Brauner’s 17 psychological premonitory 18 self-portrait that the artist’s focus was mainly on his obsessive ESSAY — Mirror: A Psychological Door
fig. 9, up Erik Bulatov, Autoportrait, 1968.
fig. 10, down Salvador Dali, Metamorphosis of Narcissus, 1937.
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19�Francis Bacon (1909—1992) Irish born British figurative painter. 20�Jean-Pierre Raynaud (1939.), French artist. 21�Erik Bulatov (1933) Russian artist. 22�Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech1st Marquis of Púbol (1904—1989), Spanish Catalan surrealist painter. 23�Paul Delvaux 1897—1994), Belgian surrealist painter. 24�René François Ghislain Magritte (1898—1967), Belgian surrealist artist. 25�Battle between cathexis and anticathexis, Cathexis, is a form of energy converted in psychic energy, which through different filters reaches the conscious mind. 26�Simulacrum, the simulative interpretation of reality. 27�Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770—1831) German philosopher. 28�The original phrase comes from the article of Edith Kurzweil “Jacques Lacan: French Freud” on the page 426 “Hegelian dialectic between Master and Slave.” For the purpose of this essay the sentence was completely modifies and only the idea was appropriated.
fig. 8, up Jean-Pierre Renard's, Self Portrait, 1991.
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self (see fig. 6). In the same spirit of Freudian psychic territory is the self-portrait of Francis Bacon 19 (see fig. 7), who as he said about himself always hated his personal visage what to some degree is visible on his artwork. However, the“Baconian” aesthetics of the mastery of his brush proof the opposite and expose his Narcissist affection of self. Jean-Pierre Reynard’s 20 self-portrait (see fig. 8 ) reflects the artist’s obsession with the grid. The grid over his face refers to the way his projected reflection is framed by the social perception of the artistic creative sensibility. The Erik Bulatov’s 21 self-portrait (see fig. 9) combines the artist’s duplicated individuality framed by the context of the social limitations reflected in the infinity of the mirror’s space. It is a psychoanalytic point of view of the artist’s self-embraced place by the space allowed to his artistic liberty. The question of the reflection projected by the other unreachable materiality of the mirror infinite space was probably aborted in the most interesting way by the Surrealism movement. The Surrealistic art tried to mirror the unconsciousness of the dreamed fantasies intellectuality. For Surrealists the psychoanalytic perception of the reflected reality was filtered through their visionary mind inspiring the efforts to apprehend and capture its essence in their artworks. Painters such as Salvador Dali, 22 Paul Delvaux, 23 and René Magritte 24 were preoccupied by the psychoanalytic vision of thought reflected in the mirror of their intellectual vision. Dali’s depiction of “Metamorphosis of Narcissus” (see fig. 10) takes the viewer to his own Narcissist space exteriorized by him on the canvas. It is a very different interpretation of Ovid’s myth in comparison with other paintings reviewed earlier. Here the traditional myth faces the intellectual contemporary reflections: the first is in the water and the second on the right side of the painting. Dali depicted his own perception of the Freud’s “Anti cathexis” 25 through his “Dalistic” personal vision of it. His dreamed hallucinations mirror its-own inner creative complexity. Paul Delvaux is exposing his “Simulacrum” 26 world overwhelmed by the erotic fantasies in artist’s chosen works (see fig. 11, 12, 13). From each portrayed characters emanates the Narcissist desire to escape to the realities of the beautiful desirable hallucinations offered by the infinite opening of the mirror’s surface. Delvaux’s paintings reflect the artist’s personal psychological visual autobiography exteriorized through the actions of the feminine characters. Delvaux through his visual linguistics shows the mirror as an object able to transfer the mental state of anyone to the other realities. The personages dream about different realities through the surface of the mirror. It could be seen as a “Hegelian” 27 dialog between the model that owns the mirror and the mirror itself, but in the reversed order where the mirror owns the model and the model takes the place of the mirror as an object. 28
ESSAY — Mirror: A Psychological Door
fig. 11, up Paul Delvaux, Mirror, 1939.
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fig. 12, up Paul Delvaux, Woman in the Mirror, 1936.
ANDRE PIJET
fig. 13, up Paul Delvaux, Woman Before Her Mirror, 1948.
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ESSAY — Mirror: A Psychological Door
fig. 15, up René Magritte, The False Mirror, 1928.
fig. 16, down René Magritte, Dangerous Liaisons, 1926.
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29�Jean Eugène Auguste Atget (1857—1927), French photographer.
fig. 14, down René Magritte, The Reproduction, 1937.
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René Magritte through the image of the mirror as the subject of his allegoric voyages depicts in his artworks various concepts in order to express the state of his mind in relation to the other self. In the image “The Reproduction” (see fig. 14) Magritte depicts his interior battle against his Narcissist temptations by depicting the mirrors incapability to reproduce the perfect reflection of the silhouette standing in front of it. In each of his paintings Magritte poses questions but he does not offer any answers. It is the viewer who reads the hidden messages accordingly to its mental ability. The painting “False Mirror” (see fig. 15) represents the artist view of the outside world from the inside of his eye. It is yet another reflection of the artist’s self. Magritte created in this piece an interior dialogue with the exterior world through the instrument of the vision. This time the artist refers to the allegoric mirror and his abilities to look at the outside world through his own psychological perspective depicting the interior space of the eye. It is possible to assume that he took his inspiration from the Velazquez’s artwork “Las Meninas or The Family of Philip IV.” In the artwork “Dangerous Liaisons” (see fig. 16) Magritte created a perfect representation of the Narcissist self-sufficiency. The mirror protective reflection of the female body suggests that we all carry within ourselves a certain amount of a psychological luggage of the Narcissist tendencies. Magritte by using the philosophical imagery provokes a dialog of an intellectual exchange by exposing publicly the fragmented unity of his visualized thoughts. The summary of his hybrid compositions collected from the logical visual contradictions engages the viewer to reflect on the surrounding realities of his own. Magritte in his works is playing with the irrationalities of the reflected space by implying different order accordingly to his own-mirrored perception of his physical existence. The apparition of photography changed significantly the problem of inconstancy of he produced mirrored reflection. From now on any reflection of mirrored space can be documented and looked at it at any time. The picture can be printed and carried as a very personal reflection of intimate moments. One of the first masters who exposed these mysterious abilities of the mirror was Eugène Atget. 29 He had a great sensibility to capture the pictures with the stories to read from them. The picture “Ambassade d’Autriche, 57 rue de Varenne” (see fig. 17), gives an impression of the mirror reflection of the hotel room. It captures the invisible history of that piece and its sublime ambiance of the physical presence of the previous visitors in that room. This picture has the content for psychoanalytic studies of the interior space reflected through the mirror in the room. The two divided parts of the chamber by the mirror are connected by the chimney and the reflected other part of the room suggests the presence of a couple, which after exchange of the energy of their libidos left the room going each of them in different directions. Atget through his image tells the story remaining hidden behind his camera ESSAY — Mirror: A Psychological Door
fig. 18, down Eugène Atget, Shop Window: Tailor Dummies, 1926.
fig. 17, up Eugène Atget, Ambassade d'Autriche, 57 rue de Varenne, 1905. fig. 19.1, down Jean Cocteau, Still from Le Sang d'un Poète, 1930.
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30�Camera lucida, it is optical instrument used as a drawing aid by artists. 31�Roland Barthes Roland (1915—1980), French literary theorist, philosopher, and critic. Author of the book “Camera Lucida.” 32�Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (1889—1963, French poet, novelist, and dramatist. 33�Luis Buñuel Portolés (22 February 1900—29 July 1983) was a Spanishborn filmmaker.
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visible on the left side of the mirror reflection. The fact that he decided to show himself in the picture and not to take another shot from different angle in order to avoid of being visible proves to some point his personal Narcissist touch in it. The picture “Shop Window: Tailor Dummies” (see fig. 18), Atget captured the essence of human existence in the industrialized world of the big cities. The human mannequins in the window, with the reflected in the glass city architecture, suggest an allegorical automatism of the Modern life, which is taken over by the fever of the commodities consumption. Atget exposes in his pictures his own admiration or even love of the objects them-selves. He is exploring the psychological otherness of the reflected spaces. From his pictures he projects a poetic psychology of the photographed area. He perceives the reflected spaces through the Freudian psycho analytics without probably knowing it. Atget was using his “camera lucida” 30 to create as Barthes putted nicely together in his book 31 referring to his thoughts about photography: “little mythologies” of human lives. Mirror and photography share common similarities. Both of them reflect the reality of the spaces and objects. However, they do it with significant differences. The reflections in the mirror are never permanent exposed on constant changes, in contrary the photographic image frames the moments of the reflected subject preserving a visual proof of its one time existence. The mirror aspect of fluid permanence was explored often by the cinematographic productions. The fact that the movie camera reflects and registers in the same time the presence and the past, which could be reviewed indefinitely as a simulated truth captured on the celluloid pages, opened another possibilities to the artistic creativities. Especially when talking about the Avant-Gardism in cinema during the Surrealist period of thirties and forties. At the beginning of nineteen thirtytwo individuals were competing between each other permanent leaders of the Surrealist cinema: the best known is Jean Cocteau 32 and Luis Bunuel.33 Jean Cocteau and Luis Bunuel received each one million dollar from the Viscount Charles de Noailles in order to freely explore their creative talents respectively. Jean Cocteau realized the movie “Le Sang d’un Poète” (see fig. 19) and Luis Bunuel made “L’Age d’Or.” The film “Le Sang d’un Poète” is loaded with a variety of symbolic references to the human existence. The first image shows a chimney build from the bricks as an allegoric representation of manhood achievements in every meaning of this word including the aspect of “libido.” The story of the film describes the life of an artist trying in his studio to create a masterpiece, which would help him to secure his artistic carrier, a dream shared by many artists. His mind is overtaken by his desires transferring him from the rational to the irrational world of his imagination. He draws a portrait of a woman with simple lines and when he finished to draw the lips he realized that they ESSAY — Mirror: A Psychological Door
fig. 19.1, down Jean Cocteau, Still from Le Sang d'un Poète, 1930.
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34�“N’est–il pas fou de réveiller les statues en sursant après leur sommeil séculaire?” 35�Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC— AD 65), Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist.
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look as if they are alive. Scared by his own irrationality, he tries to erase the leaps with his hand. The lips would not to go and finally they transferred themselves on the artist’s hand. The lips became the part of artist’s body. The beauty of the lips provokes the artist to kiss them and putting his tongue inside of his own hand. This extremely erotic scene is beautifully elaborated interpretation of Narcissus myth. Cocteau transferred in this scene the genius of his poetic imagery. He as well refers to his own Narcissism. The scene reflects his mirrored passionate interiority. The kiss of the lips on his hand releases the artist’s emotional tension. He sat on the chair and falls asleep. When he awakes he realizes that he is in the company of a sculpture without lips. By trying to detach the lips from his hand he touches the sculpture’s head and the lips from his hand moved on the bust’s face. Instantly the sculpture started to speak saying to him: “Is not it stupid to strain the statues from their mundane sleep?” 34 Here Cocteau makes another reference to our hidden desires and anxieties to expose them to the public. It is a symbolic representation of the fear to be radicalized and wrongly perceived by our gestures posed in the public. The next scene of the movie begins with the artist awaken in the empty room without windows where instead of doors there is a big mirror. Artist started to look nervously for the way to escape from this strange place. The only apparent way of getting out is the mirror. He touches the mirror and realized that its surface is liquid. He puts his hands inside the mirror in order to assure his next move. Finally he decides to jump in. On the other side of the mirror is an empty space. He swims through in the air as if in the water arriving to the corridor with many doors. Cocteau in the scene with the mirror refers to the way the mystery of the mirror is perceived by humans as yet another space to explore. As many artists have tried to explore the mirror’s illusory space before in their respective approaches, Cocteau takes his chance to propose his own poetic version of it. Cocteau in his movie explores the theme of the mirror through the labyrinth of his own interior fantasies. It is Cocteau’s own biographical story. Through the character of an artist he expose his own artistic Narcissist ” libido” of his intellectual mind. Through the reviewed few samples of various artistic creativities inspired by the void irrational space of the mirror, it is possible to see how important place in the human life this commodity object always has been. The mirror psychologically attracts our attention because it reflects the “Other” of us and gives us the impression to have a “perfect” twin. However, it is important to remember that it is just an illusion. It is appropriate to conclude with the translation of the phrase written by Seneque: 35 “The mirrors were invented for better knowledge and understanding of self."
ESSAY — Mirror: A Psychological Door
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This Is Name
Conceptual Artist Dan Graham on How to Use His Radical “Pavilion” on the Met’s Rooftop
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INTERVIEW — Dan Graham
One of the most significant and influential conceptual artists working today, Dan Graham is happy to invoke critical thinkers like Michel Foucault and Walter Benjamin, architectural history, and psychoanalytic theory when discussing the genre-blurring art he’s been making since the 1970s. The 75-year-old artist will, however, just as quickly deny that they have anything to do with his art, or even, in some cases, that he's actually read them. Indeterminacy, after all, lies at the very heart of Graham's work—as is most famously exemplified by his sinuous structures of steel, mirrors, and glass, which are neither cleanly architecture nor art. As an artist, Graham developed his working vocabulary during a period when American art was obsessed with the written word. (His earliest and most well-known work, 1966’s Homes for America, was a photo-based essay published in Arts Magazine, which Graham designed to be totally ephemeral and disposable.) This was the 1970s, after all, the heyday of conceptualism, when critical theory was reinvigorating sculpture as it came up for air from a century of Modernism's ceaseless analyses and radical re-inventions. Perhaps because of the hyperawareness of the nuances of influence, Graham seems at once primed to encourage and eager to exterminate a theoretical reading of his work. Luckily for us, regardless of whether one grasps all of the somewhat esoteric explanations that Graham offers, in the end, as he will readily admit, his pieces are about resonant universals: presence, light, and time. Graham’s latest piece—which may or may not be called a “pavilion,” depending on whom you ask—is installed on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and is the most recent in a series of quasi-functional installations that combine bus shelters, garden pergolas, and references to art history in quasi-functional site-specific installations. On a sunny day in May, visitors to the museum’s rooftop garden certainly had no problem engaging with the work, which consists of a steel armature supporting a pane of curving mirrored glass, box hedges, and astroturf. Some museumgoers (many on their lunch breaks from work) were sitting on the artificial turf installed by Graham—who made this pavilion in collaboration with the Swiss landscape architect Günther Vogt—enjoying the respite the piece offers from the summer sun: no critical interpretation required. Artspace met with Graham at his SoHo home and studio to discuss his project at the Met, why he started making pavilions in the first place, and to find out where this art-magazine interventionist turns for quality art reviews these days.
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IAN WALLACE
Let’s start with the term “pavilion”.
I don’t call the piece at the Met a pavilion, I’ve been doing things with landscape since the ’80s that aren't pavilions. Right, because the Met piece is referred to as a pavilion, but there’s an interview you did a couple years ago where you suggested that you didn’t like that term for describing these works. How did this piece come about?
The current piece is a collaboration with Günther Vogt — the best landscape architect, probably, in the world. But the person I really have to thank Ian Alteveer, the Met’s assistant curator. This piece goes back to the work I was doing in the ’80s in France. In France, the socialist government wanted to regionalize all art, so all the art spaces were historical gardens in Brittany. Out of that, I wrote an article called "Museum as Garden, Garden as Museum," which, by the way, was an attack on Daniel Buren. See, Buren believes the museum is fixed, whereas I think every 10 years it changes. It began with dOCUMENTA, at Münster. You had chateaus and parks and gardens. And it was a family situation — people take their family car, camp out, on Saturday and Sunday and look at the art. The Met, of course, is in the center of the city, but it’s also perched right on the edge of Central Park. If the museum’s role changes every decade, what would you say is the current situation, for the Met or for museums in the United States in general?
Unfortunately this decade is dedicated to overblown spectacle. It’s very different in Europe. I’m dependent upon European socialism, which only works on a very local level now. All my great pieces are in very remote areas, like Norway. Norway is socialist; they give all their money to education programs, and small townships commission individual artworks. The other place where I work is for socialist mayors in France. I have a piece at the Port de Versailles. The last mayor built this tramway around the edge of the city, and it’s at a reduced fare, so it’s for working-class people, and poor people, and every station has a work of art. At the Met, I kept the hedges they have, which are rectilinear. The pavilion part of the work is baroque, like the piece I did on the roof of the Dia Art Foundation in 1992. I think it’s a combination of George Seurat, who’s a hero of mine — because people lie down inside it — and Bruce Nauman. It’s pleasure and designed for people who have just gotten off work. And the orientation of the piece on the roof comes from Russian Constructivism. In other words, it’s kind of an off-diagonal.
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this page Rooftop Urban Park Project, 1981-1991 at Dia Art Foundation.
The first thing I noticed when I saw the piece is that you have the grid of Manhattan laid out before you, but the piece has a curve so it actually sort of breaks that axis of the city.
Well, that’s the same as the Dia rooftop piece, except the Dia piece was functional. The Dia piece was trying to combine ’70s alternative space with the ’80s corporate atriums. It was about combining the ’70s and the ’80s, a slum roof and a penthouse roof. In the '70s everyone was doing things in tiny little alternative spaces, which were basically music spaces. So the ’70s scene was very informative for me. I don’t like the fact that I’m doing such large, corporate things, that are expensive, but in fact people want that now. All my work has to do with city planning. It began when I showed Sol LeWitt’s work when I was running John Daniels Gallery, and Sol LeWitt’s favorite artist was de Chirico, who, in paintings, is depicted as the city planner of Turino. And I hated the idea of the white cube — it’s a dumb idea. And you said that the pavilion at Dia was in part countering the white cube of Dia’s gallery space. How was the Dia pavilion different than the one at the Met?
It was a better piece because it was more functional. The tool shed had videos by artists from the ’70s. It also had a coffee bar, which was like the IBM atrium on Madison Avenue. The flooring was boardwalk material because I thought Battery Park City would be creeping up the Hudson. I left the water tower where it was. In a way, I think the Met was more of a challenge. It’s a very ugly space. I was asked by the Met's contemporary curator Sheena Wagstaff to do something so that people could relate to the tree tops of Central Park. So it’s very much for European tourists, who love to see New York City.
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IAN WALLACE
You said the Dia piece was functional whereas this one is not, but I noticed that people were using it in numerous ways, sitting under it, taking pictures with it, fixing their hair in the reflection, and so on. It also has that grass turf, which makes people want to lie down on it.
The artificial grass was my idea. You obviously can’t put normal grass up there, because it would be muddy. And using ivy, instead of boxhedge, was the landscape architect’s solution. You probably don’t know this, but in America, ivy is only used on university buildings. In Europe it’s used for residential hedges. But there were a lot of technical problems, like the middle of the Met’s roof is slightly elevated, so the landscape architect gave me many options as to the tilt of the turf, and we rounded it off. What about the actual construction of the piece?
I have two architects who are based in Europe, but they don’t deal with construction. I simply send the fax. We had a site visit with the landscape architect when we decided to make it rectilinear rather than square, but I had nothing to do with building it. I didn’t supervise anything, basically it was Ian Alteveer who put all the elements together. Had you worked with Günther Vogt before?
Only on this one project, but I’d admired his work for years. I know a lot about landscape architecture, and I thought he was brilliant. He works with a lot of corporate architects — you know the Birches, at the entrance to the Tate Modern, he did that. I’d always wanted to work with him because I think he’s more brilliant than I am.
this page Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout, 2014.
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INTERVIEW — Dan Graham
I want to talk more about the materials of the work, because this piece includes two-way mirror, which is something of a signature material for you—that is, you’ve been using mirrors since the 1970s.
The reason I originally used mirror was that Jimmy Carter wanted to be ecologically friendly, and decided that using one way mirror on big office buildings would cut down on air conditioning costs. It only actually worked in Los Angeles, where there’s a hot climate. But it’s also an alibi for the corporation, because they can identify the surface of their massive buildings with the landscape. Because they’re reflective?
Right, they reflect the sky. But then it becomes surveillance, as well — you can see out, but you can’t see in. So I use both transparent and reflective glass. I didn’t want to make the piece large because my work is usually human-scale. Also it’s very important that you walk around the work, because the work is about time. Minimal art is static. My work has always been inter-subjective.
You’ve talked about these works in regards to the “mirror stage,” an idea from Jacques Lacan.
Well, yeah, it was actually Sartre, from Being and Nothingness. Lacan ripped him off. It’s the idea that if you’re a small child, you look at somebody who sees you, and you see them at the same time that you’re being seen. People gaze at each other as they’re gazing like spectacles, and you know who did that in art? Georges Seurat. He painted people at the circus, looking at the spectacle, and looking at each other. It’s a play of mirrors. I think these works are pretty much against Minimalism. Minimalism was static, you couldn’t lie down. There was a vague relationship to architecture. For the Dia piece, I used the cube oriented towards the grid of the city. I used hedges because the center of the city is always two-waymirrored office buildings, and the edges of the city are kind of hedge boundaries, for suburban houses. It’s a historical overlay of different park periods. My work is historical. Minimal art was about the present time, and had no sense of history. This is totally against Minimal art.
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IAN WALLACE
Well, talking about the work in terms of time makes me think of Robert Morris’s show at Green Gallery in 1964, an early show of Minimalist sculpture, which was about time, in a way, because it was about how the viewer moved around and through the sculptures in the gallery.
Well, you know Morris was married to Simone Forti, and he took all that from her. When I was at Nova Scotia college of art, Richard Serra told me that all his work came from Simone Forti. I think dance — not as something being watched, but the idea of being the spectators, experiencing their bodies and experiencing other people’s bodies in a relaxed situation — is very much part of my work too. I never saw Simone’s work, but I took that cue from Serra. Yeah that’s what I was thinking of when I was talking about how the piece breaks the grid, because you can’t actually walk through it. Instead, it leads you into a kind of funnel that's ultimately closed.
And people can see each other on either side, and it makes for more complex reflections. And of course you also have the reflection of the cityscape behind you.
Well, that was also true of the Dia piece. Basically my work has always been about the city plan. I think the question of the photo opportunity is also interesting, because, while plenty of people seem to be posing for photos or taking selfie in front of the work at the Met, it must be difficult to really document the effect of these works in photographs.
this spread Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout, 2014.
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Well, I made beautiful videos of them. I make videos of all my pieces myself, with people in them, so when I do lectures I can show them. I walk around them with my cheap little video camera and with people lying down, people seeing each other, time changing — and with the clouds changing, the reflectivity and transference is always shifting. So the key thing is, the work is timebased. It’s about duration. This comes from listening to La Monte Young, and the influence of Steve Reich, who was my best friend. In La Monte Young's work, you can actually hear the acoustics of your own brain — it’s inside-brain time. INTERVIEW — Dan Graham
So obviously it comes from the idea of the arcades, from Walter Benjamin, and also it comes from the idea of the nineteenth-century botanical garden. But this is all documented in the 40 minute video that they’re showing downstairs at the Met, which was actually the catalogue for the Dia foundation show.
When did your interest in architecture start?
From the very beginning — Homes for America was about the city plan. But most of all, it comes from the idea of light. I’m an Aries; I think all Aries’ work is about light. And of course the sun is very important in the Met piece. Most of my pavilions are pure landscape, and they’re usually in very remote parts of the world. Like near the North Pole, in Norway, where I do pieces in very small townships. When I first went to Scandinavia, to the Louisiana Museum there, there was a sunken floor for children where they could lie down and interact with the art above them. My mother was an educational psychologist — she was head of Head Start in Newark. So children’s way of using space for education and entertainment was quite important for me. On the other hand, I still incorporate aspects of Minimal art, because I love Minimal art — most of all Dan Flavin. When I was running John Daniels Gallery, I did a group show with Flavin. People stepped on his sculpture, one of his fluorescent light pieces, and broke it — and he liked it. He sent all the parts back to the hardware store. That’s why I did my magazine pieces, including Homes for America — I wanted to do things that were disposable. I have problems with big pieces, like the rooftop piece. Homes for America was done with the cheapest equipment possible. I really have doubts about doing large things, like the rooftop piece. But I think it fits the situation. Could you talk about how the pavilions developed out of your earlier work?
I got into pavilions for two reasons. Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion was one. You walk around it, and it’s landscaped, and I think the whole thing is an allegory for the Weimar Republic. It had hedges outside, the hedges were reflected onto green marble, and the thick glass was actually green, and that was reflected onto images of people looking into it — it’s like a showcase window — and there’s a reflecting pond. What you saw was a luxury product of Germany, which was very poor at the time.
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IAN WALLACE
I combined that with bus shelters, other urban furniture, and telephone booths, which still existed then. So it’s really street furniture and temporary pavilions like the Barcelona Pavilion that inspired me. Everything Mies did in Europe was landscaped. In fact, his last project in Germany was a country club golf course.
And the idea of the pavilion also has other connotations. It makes me think of the Worlds’ Fair and the national pavilions at the Venice Biennale.
Well, that’s a good observation, because when I had my gallery, the World’s Fair in Queens was happening, and Brion O’Doherty had the American Express Pavilion and he took all the artists from my gallery, including Smithson. So yes, that was formative. And of course, my children’s pavilion was supposed to be like a World’s Fair. I’ll be showing that at my upcoming show at Greene Naftali Gallery in September. In school, a lot of what the ’60s suppressed was the fake utopia. It was a very complex time. Speaking of which, I actually hated the Grateful Dead. My favorite groups are Love, the Birds, and the Seeds. They’re all from Los Angeles. I’m still playing all that music. Where do you go nowadays to find new music and art?
I read the Village Voice. The Village Voice has the best movie reviews and the best art reviews. The New Yorker trashes everything — they’re quite dumb. But the Voice still has the best writers. And I think you’ll love the new Seth Rogen film, "Neighbors."
Are you a fan of Seth Rogen?
Well, I’m Jewish. He’s the greatest Jewish comedian. And he’s getting better and better.
this page Homes for America, 1966.
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INTERVIEW — Dan Graham
DEDNEPSUS YROMEM 94
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NGUYEN HUY HUNG
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PHOTOGRAPHY — Suspended Memory
Memories have a way of sleeping in our soft minds, entangled between loose fibers of the past. Existing across time, these unconscious possessions are lost in space. When we try to recall instances, what we recover, are only but sediments of perception and experiences, bordering on the fringes of our slippery minds. The photographic series Suspended Memory explores the concept of memory in relation to place and time; questioning if memory and memory images can be perceived as places that we can return to. The process is largely based on Hung's own memory and his acknowledgment of its instabilities. This, to him, is a kind of beauty, one of life and ephemeralities. The sentimental experiences of color and intimate thoughts are evoked in the series through photography and a recollection from past conversations which holds meaning to him. Addressing the transient and formless nature of memory, Hung explores between states of solid imagery and its distortion, while having them meet to form the complete memory, tied together by interpretations uniquely to his own. In this mix, certain places from his past are placed side by side with mirroring-like substitutes, conjuring alternating moments of movements and pauses, gaps and endings. As memory functions in the domain between to remember and to forget, Hung's photography also suggest the roles of senses in memory, by evoking forms and cues that function as bold structures and coordinates to navigate across time. For we are always in a constant search for being, a reach beyond our senses, into the dormant depths of memory.
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PHOTOGRAPHY — Suspended Memory
08.2016
“Hey, I spotted a Exeggutor near here! Hurry up or it will run away!"
04.2017
99
PHOTOGRAPHY — Suspended Memory
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PHOTOGRAPHY — Suspended Memory
“Don't stand there! A car is coming toward you!"
“I'm fast!"
04.2017
301
PHOTOGRAPHY — Suspended Memory
05.2017
“No! Just one day only. Don't waste money!"
“Should we buy data plan?"
“Okie..."
“Walk back to McDonald's. We use free wifi there to book a Grab."
06.2017
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PHOTOGRAPHY — Suspended Memory
701
PHOTOGRAPHY — Suspended Memory 06.2017
“There's two dogs in front of the door. OMG so cuteee!"
06.2017
“When will the bus come?"
901
PHOTOGRAPHY — Suspended Memory
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PHOTOGRAPHY — Suspended Memory 06.2017
“Chinatown Complex Food Center, okay?"
“Sun's going down. I'm hungry!"
12.2017
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PHOTOGRAPHY — Suspended Memory
EVENTS Singapore
ArchXpo 2018 02 — 04 October 2018 10:00 AM — 06:00 PM Marina Bay Sands, 10 Bayfront Avenue, Convention Center, 018956
Portfolio Clinic – Architecture 15 March 2018 7:00 PM — 9:00 PM National Design Centre, 111 Middle Road, Training Rooms 1 & 2, 188969
The ArchXpo is an international trade fair for architecture and construction. At this annual event taking place in Singapore building related materials, products, services and technologies are presented. The focus is on interior and exterior finishes as well as interior design. The fair is an important information and communication platform of the construction industry enabling industry experts to share experience, keep their knowledge up to date and to make important business contacts.
Are you a prospective design student or DesignSingapore Scholarship applicant keen on pursuing studies in Architecture? The portfolio clinic is an opportunity for you to present your work to practicing designers and academia. Reviewers offer their opinions and feedback, and you gather advice on how to strengthen your portfolio in preparation for school or scholarship applications. Attendance to the portfolio clinic is not part of the application process for the Design Singapore Scholarship.
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Singapore Biennale: An Atlas of Mirrors 27 October 2017 — 26 February 2018
Exploring shared histories and current realities within and beyond the region, Singapore Biennale 2016 presents a constellation of artistic perspectives that provide unexpected ways of seeing the world and ourselves. Titled An Atlas of Mirrors, the international contemporary art exhibition features site-specific and never seen before contemporary artworks by more than 60 artists across Southeast Asia, and East and South Asia.
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EVENTS
EVENTS Elsewhere
Cities’ Identity Through Architecture and Arts 25 — 27 September 2018 9am — 6pm Helwan University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Cairo, Egypt
Mirror Maze by Es Devlin 21 — 25 September 2018 Copeland Park, Peckham, London
In this conference, examples, and tendencies dealing with u rban identities a s well as the transformation of cities that shape the current art scene in different places of the world will be discussed. This type of architectural art continuously renews itself − from new materials to different means of communication, from new approaches to perceptional paradigms and nature in the millennium, from new subjects to manifestations. Contemporary art continues to be produced in various directions, consumed and put forward into ideas.
British set designer Es Devlin has created a disorienting mirror maze inside a former warehouse in Peckham, which is perfumed with an exclusive Chanel scent. What the maze represents is the complex structures that all of us create around ourselves to just function and I wonder how easy it is to allow oneself access to these ancient instinctive connections the more complex our day-to-day structures become.
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Toronto Design Offsite 15 — 21 January 2018 1214 Queen Street West, Studio 203 Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Chicago Architecture Biennial 16 September 2018 — 7 January 7 2019 Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington Street, Chicago
Toronto Design Offsite returns for an eighth year, bringing a host of designers and artists to the Canadian city, and turning it into a “hub for creativity". Highlights this year are set to include an installation from designer Jordan Soderberg Mills, who uses mirrors and light to create hypnotic illusions.
The second edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) is the largest architecture and design exhibition in North America, showcasing the trans-formative global impact of creativity and innovation in these fields. This year’s Biennial features over 141 practitioners from more than 20 countries addressing the 2018 theme “Make New History.” Artistic Directors Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee have selected architects and artists whose eye-opening creations will invite the public to explore how the latest architecture can and will make new history in places around the world.
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EVENTS
STOCKISTS
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InForm is a monthly
publication made for a school project by Nguyen Huy Hung. To stay updated, follow us on various social media. Website inform.mag Facebook /inform.mag Instagram @inform.mag
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