Alice Aycock – DesignApplause

ask the right question. expo chicago 2013.

Sep 21, 2013

The second annual Expo Chicago, the International Exposition of Contemporary and Modern Art, is dedicated to strong and innovative art and design. This year’s design amplifies Studio Gang Architects (SGA) previous experiments using suspended large-scale sculptural elements to define distinct areas for gathering and relaxing, while simultaneously creating an optical experience of the art and activity that shifts as visitors move through the space. Refining the Expo floor’s organization (a grid cut through by a strong diagonal pathway) will also increase ease of navigation and further enhance the art’s visibility.

left > right / modern wing exhibit | pre-Expo assembly

In both Expo 12 & 13 SGA incorporates the firm’s collaborative, inquiry-based and research-driven approach presented in 2012 in an exhibition in Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. “Full-scale mock ups test the capabilities and behavior of materials, as can be seen in the hanging “Rope Rooms” in the exhibit. Investigating and uncovering a material’s properties such as fluidity, viscosity, bending, or stiffness, independent of a particular project, is often beneficial for the work that may come next.”

left > right / cutaway cabinets & bend | snarkitecture | 2013

Renowned architecture firm Snarkitecture serves up Cutaway Cabinets, a new series designed by Snarkitecture for MCA Chicago Pop-Up Bookstore at EXPO. Appearing at first as simple white boxes, the cladding of each cut-away in a series of irregular excavations. The openings reveal an internal spine whose surfaces create a range of display and storage options. In addition, Bend, a series of upholstered foam elements provide seating under the main center cone, designed by Snarkitecture in partnership with Volume Gallery, Chicago. Bend debuted at Design Miami 12.

todd glickman, director of new business and strategy | my new secret tribe

While at MCA’s pop-up we discover ‘artist designed footwear’ Bucketfeet, a globally inspired footwear brand that connects people across the world through art! The two-year-old Chicago-based company has designer Scott Wilson [Minimal] as one of their advisors and was asked by Tony Karman to come to Expo. [ details ]

[DesignApplause] Todd, the concept, how does art and design reside in Bucketfeet?
[Todd Glickman] That’s a very interesting question. On the design side we’ve tried to create a silhouette to where the shoe is functional. If you look inside the shoe it’s all organic soft cotton canvas with a removable latex insole that has bubbles under the ball of the feet. So you’ll like your shoe for the aesthetic and they’ll last a long time and be very comfortable.
[DA] Do you have ‘Secret Tribe’ in a size 13? I’d like to wear them to Vernissage tonight.
[TG] The right question, yes, we do!

eugin batz | spatial effect of colors and forms, an exercise for color-theory, from a course taught by vasily kandinsky, tempera over pencil on black paper | 1929>30 | bauhaus-archiv berlin

art |architecture |design | 1917 > today
[ de stijl: mondrian and his influence ] [ bauhaus ] [ lessons from the bauhaus ]

In the art world, DesignApplause attempts ‘objects-only’ which could include a sculpture, or a photograph or painting of an Air Stream trailer for example. However, typically the art conversations are pieces by designers that reside in design galleries. For Expo 2013, for the first time, we put this question to the dealers we talked to: is there any architecture or design inspired art in your booth today?

The very first gallery…

steam | alexandre arrechea | magnan metz gallery | 2013

[DA] Alberto, is there any architecture or design inspired art in your booth today?
[Alberto Magnan] Alexandre Arrechea is a Cuban born artist. He works a lot with design and art. This piece is represents Chicago bridges which are all stacked on each other and this is a design project he has going.

multicolored cube | alois kronschaeger | tierney gardarin | 2013

[DA] Cristin, we were talking about the design influence on this artist.
[Cristin Tierney] This is the work of Alois Kronschaeger. He’s based in Brooklyn and originally from Austria. He works in the arenas of fine art that crosses over into design, fashion and architecture. He’s about to have a large scale installation which will be part art and part architecture, 10,000 sq/ft of experiential art, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson opening October 4.

untitled | gyorgy kepes | robert koch gallery | 1939>41

[DA] Ada, do you have design or architecture influenced work displayed today?
[Ada Takahashi] Ron, you are going to like this artist. Gyorgy Kepes taught at the Institute of Design in Chicago. He taught a class on light and design. In this photogram you can see he’s playing with numbers and letters as design elements. Gyorgy was very influential here in Chicago and Moholy Nagy asked him to teach.
[Robert Koch] I’m an architect.

scenery | kathy taslitz | the international sculpture center | 2013

[DA] Sonya, …… ?
[Sonya] Kathy has a pretty diverse background. Her mom was an artist. She was an advertising account executive and morphed into a photo stylist in fashion and home furnishings. She’s now an award winning interior designer. Scenery is fiberglass, video projection and sound, which is about as diverse as her background.

the artist | moto waganari | hollis taggart galleries | 2013

[DesignApplause] Martin, …… ?
[Martin Friedrichs] Moto Waganari is a German architect who’s given name is Lutz Wagner. He works in a CAD program to design these beautiful sculptures. Mostly figure studies but also other things. He then prints them on a 3D printing process. Key essential elements of his work is also the shadows that his works cast. He’s very particular about what source of light is used.

spin-the-spin | alice aycock | galerie thomas schulte | 2012

[DA] Gonzalo, …… ?
[Gonzalo Alarcón] Alice Aycock studied architecture but her degrees are in fine art. But you can see the architectural influence , especially in the 70s installations, as many of her works, her elements of minimalism hybrid forms, computer programming, to create a complex combination of architectural and sculptural pieces. this piece represents her current study of energy of the city, a spinning off and colliding of thoughts and ideas.

aluminum diamond curtain | tim prentice | maxwell davidson gallery | 2013

[DA] Charlie, …… ?
[Charles Davidson] We’re looking at a piece of kinetic sculpture by Tim Prentice, a very successful architect but found his true love was really making artwork. Most of his sculpture is to define wind currents. And he designs each piece from the perspective that he thinks about where the piece is located so they really react with the intended space.

[DA] Charlie, I see a pavilion from Tim on the horizon. I’ve talked to 10 galleries already and I am hit and miss on the backgrounds of the art that draws me into the gallery. I was drawn in by this piece that looks like the Foster designed 30 St Mary Axe building in London (2001>2003) and thinking the building inspired this artist.

beehive temple | mary ann unger | maxwell davidson gallery | 1987

[CD] A debatable assumption. This is a mockette of a larger piece which is on the campus of Lehigh University. This is the wooden study by Mary Ann Unger who died in 1998. A lot of her drawings are very geometrical and architectural.

headdress | pedro s. de movellan | maxwell davidson gallery | 1997

[DA] Back at you Charlie.
[CD] We’re looking at a sculpture by Pedro De Movellan, an American sculpture who does all kinetic work who works in wood, metal and mostly carbon fiber now. His father was an architect and his mother an artist.

Did not find an artist on premise to tell their own story. But did go off-site Friday night to see Herbert Murrie who has a fine art degree and started as an artist then to a very successful graphic design practice for 30-plus years while still painting and now back to painting full-time for five years.

notes & thangs colors & bangs | herbert murrie | jennifer norback fine art | 2009

[DA] Herb, does your design training play into your art?
[HM] My process, especially the collage which does not look like collage, is both technical and complex, and there are pieces that have to be designed, constructed. Add ‘chance’ which has two meanings; in English it can mean accident or hazard. In French “avoir de la chance” means to be lucky. I have questioned for a very, very long time if there is a destiny for us or is it completely blind; the push pull between accident, destiny and luck.

Sadly I’ve run out of time. I’ve only asked 12 galleries and found eight hits. What if all 100 were asked? Not to mention IN/SITU and special exhibitions. And the range went from “Jaume Plensa would not liked being lumped in with architects and designers” to Robert Koch saying “I’m an architect.” Here’s what I’m thinking: and it’s not attributed to Yogi Berra or anyone else but me and it makes sense to me. “You can take the this out of that, but you can’t take the that out of this.”

Expo Chicago 2013 is a very tight and fussy show.

event> Expo Chicago @expochicago
date> 19 > 22 September 2013
venue> Navy Pier’s Festival Hall
general admission> 20 > 22 September 2013 | Sunday 22 Sept. 22 | Fri + Sat 11a > 7p | Sun 11a > 6p

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Art in the hamptons. Parrish art museum.

Apr 17, 2013

click > enlarge

We decided to visit the new Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, near Southampton on Long Island before the season started. This came after a week when the Museum of Modern Art announced its decision to destroy Todd Williams and Billie Tsien’s Museum of American Folk Art building after only a few years.

The contrast could not be greater between the two art museums: the forty-foot-wide building on a townhouse lot in the city and the long barn-like structure sprawling across a vast fourteen acre pasture on a road outside of town.

The Parrish is the work of another dually denominated firm, Herzog and De Meuron—actually, more a collective or team than partnership and a Pritzker prize winner.

It makes a striking first appearance, glimpsed from the almost rural road, an immensely long silver stick stretched out in green grass. (Silver is how the corrugated tin roof and bare concrete at first read to the eye.)

As the visitor approaches, the building comes more and more to suggest the agricultural buildings of the area, notably the barns of the potato farms. This was of course intentional. But its long double roofs, to many Americans with rural experience, will suggest the shape of chicken houses—not what Herzog and de Meuron had in mind. “Our design for the Parrish Art Museum is a reinterpretation of a very genuine.

Herzog & de Meuron typology, the traditional house form,” Jacques Herzog wrote recently. “What we like about this typology is that it is open for many different functions, places and cultures. Each time this simple, almost banal form has become something very specific, precise and also fresh.”

The big sheltering roofs also echo the feel of the landscape in the area: the huge sky dominates the flat fields with few structures or trees to break the horizon.

The building is constructed from a hierarchy of materials, from informal and impermanent toward their opposites, from top to bottom: corrugated metal roof with skylights, bare timber, steel I beams and finally concrete walls and floor slab.

At first the concrete walls seemed excessively strong. But they already look like ancient stone and they ground the impermanence of the lumber and steel above, turning the vernacular forms into more ambitious, “high” architecture.

One of the failures of the Folk Art museum was its entrance: it was hard to find and far from welcoming. Oddly, the entrance at the Parrish is problematic too The visitor approaches a large glass wall which appears to welcome, but it has no doors. Instead, the entrance is to the right in a dark wall. Is this a metaphor for (or joke about) the exclusivity of the Hamptons? Or a metaphor for the difficulty of entering the world of art by head-on thinking?

The two roofs join at a point that covers a central hall, so the roof framing joins in an X theme above visitors’ heads. The space is remarkably flexible, with temporary walls; large lobby like spaces alternate with closed galleries. The variety of spaces are useful but the visitor has little guidance; a promised mobile phone app or printed map will be needed. The space planning is highly practical given the face of art today, the range from performance to video to installation and mega sculpture.

The museum had been located in a prissy and forbidding Italianate mansion downtown in Southampton before moving to Water Mill, 2 miles away. The design for the new building originally envisioned an assemblage of studio like buildings but was radically rethought after the recession crippled fundraising. The result may be better; it is certainly less pretentious.

This area—eastern Long Island—was the location of the original Big Duck, the duck shaped concrete building that sold ducks and the area is full of basic buildings—sheds, often covered with shingles, the duck’s opposite in Venturi’s pairing, the so called decorated shed. The two joined structures of the Parrish are undecorated sheds but carefully detailed ones. The door handles are one off, sculptured rods. Some clever architect the in H & de M office devised a untreated wooden bench structure about ten feet square, for the galleries. Clever pocket doors close off the shop when it is closed. Benches cast in concrete run along the length of the north side. The roof extends beyond the walls, covering a wide walk and a whole outdoor gathering space. Thanks to the visible wooden beams, this provides a suggestion of traditional Japanese architecture. It is also going to make the place a terrific rental for weddings and the fundraisers that during the season tap wealthy local sojourners.

After looking at the Parrish’s size and generous rooms, we sat in the café, on the chairs Konstantin Grcic designed specifically for the museum. (Review: tough on vertebra.) Thinking of the Folk Art museum, I thought: how mad it seems to think of trying to build a forty foot wide museum! I almost thought it might make sense to bring the whole folk art collection here, with galleries to display it.

The Parrish’s collection is grounded on holdings with local tradition: the Impressionist William Merritt Chase, who set up a painting school in the area and the realist Fairfield Porter. But the area was home and second home to many abstract expressionists and Pop artists. De Kooning, Chamberlain and Lichtenstein to name a few. Up the road a few miles is the site where Jackson Pollock wrapped his Oldsmobile around a tree. A growing collection based on local traditions is sure to benefit from the proximity of part-time residents and visitors among collectors as well as artists like Alice Aycock, whose show is opening next week.

You might think of it as a vacation museum—its barebones construction might be taken as the informality of the second house.

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