Artist and activist – Ai Weiwei’s collaborations on global architecture projects
At a recent Royal Academy event architect Daniel Rosbottom compared Ai Weiwei’s use of brick in his buildings with the sunflower seeds in the famous Tate Modern installation: “each brick is different, but also part of a multitude”. Ai’s poetic sensibility in the way he uses materials can be evidenced at RA’s retrospective, on until December 13, where a small separate exhibition tells the story of the studio and home he designed in the Beijing suburb of Caochangdi for himself and the series of brick houses around it.
With Swiss architect Simon Hartmann and expert on Chinese art Philip Tinari, Rosbottom spoke about architecture as part of Ai’s art and activism, drawing parallels with minimalism in the way the buildings make you think about spatial volumes. As Rosbottom points out the debt to artists like Donald Judd might be unconscious, but the play with proportion and spatial tension is similar.
An afternoon at both Frieze London and Frieze Masters fairs with my friend and colleague, photographer Diego Ferrari was hugely inspiring. Diego teaches at the MA program at Kingston and his work has often been seen on the pages of Grand Tour. He is behind the Tate Britain Urban Encounters symposium, taking place this weekend and the UrbanPhotoFestwith Goldsmith’s College
The built environment is a central subject in fine art photography, especially in the conceptual documentary genre. Bernd and Hilla Becher have been a strong influence for the dead-pan observational style, recognised in the works by the Düsseldorf School photographers. Hilla Becher (1934-2015) sadly passed away October 10, but the legacy created through a 50 years collaboration with her husband lives on – as witnessed also at Frieze London.
The best-known of the Becher School photographers is probably Andreas Gursky, whose pictures are printed on an epic scale and represented by the White Cube gallery in London. At Frieze, Bangkok IX , from 2011, was the same scale (307 x 221 cm) as his previous work, but a more abstract approach: “Here the line between photography and painting gets increasingly blurred – it’s impressionistic” as Diego suggested.
There was also Thomas Struth’s famous picture of the Cologne Cathedral interior, showing the abstract stained-glass window by Gerhard Richter, exhibited at the Münich gallery Rüdiger Schöttle’s stand. Richter has been another mentor for Struth in the Düsseldorf Art Academy, alongside the Bechers.
Equally monumental, we liked JR’s Ballet at the Galerie Perrotin booth. By placing a delicate female figure against the tower block, Diego sensed JR was questioning “ the creative potential against the modernist premise” with the juxtaposition in this large-scale print. Smaller though than the giant ones JR pastes over buildings and urban sites, what the artist/activist has become famous for, but impressive.
Another evocative print – made from a found slide from 1969 – Sea of Galilee was a beautifully recycled view by Israeli artist Sharon Ya’ari, pregnant with political meaning, at the stand of Tel Aviv gallery Sommer Contemporary. Diego was already familiar with Ya’ari’s work and rates him as “one of the great contemporary photographers observing the history of Israel in a serene manner”.
Wolfgang Tillmans’ work looks at the private side, exploring incidents of individuality and irrationality. At Maureen Paley’s stand we found an LA cityscape by Tillmans, again a personal, subjective viewpoint, highlighting the urban structure, where the car is such a fundamental element as well as a personal space within the city. At Stevenson gallery Guy Tillim’s dyptych provided a similar viewpoint, freezing a moment from Johannesburg, extended over two panels.
At the Focus section, reserved for younger galleries, we discovered a solo show of Amie Siegel’s film and photographic works at Simon Preston’s booth, an interesting formal and conceptual exploration into architecture. Using the modernist icon Villa Savoie and its black copy in Adelaide, Australia as motifs, her work could be read as a reversal of the utopia of modernism, as Diego pointed out.
Experimenter gallery from Kolkata, also at Focus, had dedicated their stand to Praneet Soi’s work (main photo), an Amsterdam-based multidisciplinary artist, who explored patterns and forms in South Asian culture. This included a series of photographic collages, looking at the ancient architecture of the Sufi shrines. Soi is a versatile artist who studied painting and now works with a range of media. It’s great seeing contributions from Asian artists, as Diego pointed out, which shows a different perspective into what design and architecture can be.
Pioneering works from 20th century artists, like László Moholy-Nagy, all shot on film, were on show at Frieze Masters. Moholy-Nagy’s constructivist-style composition Marseille, Rue Canebière, a gelatin silver print from 1929 at Edwynn Houk Gallery, exemplified the revolutionary Bauhaus aesthetic of seeing and composing space. Alongside Ed Ruscha’s Gasoline Station Portfolio series from 1962, for sale at Bruce Silverstein’s booth, these photographs are key works in the canon of 20th century photography.
Moholy-Nagy’s approach is not just about formalism: “In this photograph he gives an interiority to the view that extends to the public space, the pattern acts like veil, emphasizing the separation” Diego pointed out.
Ed Ruscha’s rigorous project of documenting the LA vernacular building types could be seen as the forerunner of the Becher school. Ruscha had been admiring petrol stations as a child and had wanted to build miniature models of them. He ended up doing the photographic documentation instead, although in the contemporary context artists are building spatial models in order to then photograph them, as Thomas Demand, one of the Becher disciples, does.
Exploring Frieze Masters you could see how photography has influenced the way we understand and evaluate space – and the continuous circulation of ideas. Moholy-Nagy rejected the idea of space as enclosure, which today is almost a given.
Photographs from Palmyra taken in 2007 by artist and architectural designer Mark Pimlott are part of his wide archive documenting our surroundings and the human impulse. These images show the remains of rare Roman architecture, now destroyed by fanatic iconoclasts. Palmyra is featured in Pilmott’s installation World (2012), situated outside the BBC’s New Broadcasting House. His piece names 750 sites of international significance and encourages viewers to consider the interplay between the seemingly random locations.
Can you describe the atmosphere and what was most special about Palmyra?
To get to Palmyra, you have to drive across the desert. Along the road from Damascus, in the middle of the broad valley of the desert north of the city, a pale landscape, one finds the otherworldly roadside ‘Baghdad Cafe’. We approached Palmyra at the end of the afternoon; an oasis, with the ruins of the ancient city just beyond. The ruins are laid out on the plain, protected by the fortress of hills to the west and its sentinel funerary towers. The cardo and decumanus, remnants of a triumphal arch, as well as traces of walls of houses fill the valley like the desiccated carcass of a great city. Stones and landscape are tan and golden, the sky a flat and wan blue. Standing out from this field of stranded colonnades are the fabulously detailed temples of Bel and Baal-shamin – almost perfect, fabulously detailed. The detail is surprising; crisp and elaborate. In the case of Bel it is monstrous in scale, as is the case of the great Roman ruins at Apamea, Bosra and Baalbek. The scale seems to have been increased in the colonies to be even more impressive.
Was your trip part of a longer journey?
I was visiting diplomatic friends based in Damascus, in April – May 2007. We saw Bosra, Apamea, the Dead Cities, Palmyra; and in Lebanon, the ruins of Aïn Anjar and Baalbek. Unfortunately, I had to leave the trip early and did not see Krak Chevalier or Aleppo, much to my eternal regret.
Could you compare Palmyra and its significance to anywhere else?
Palmyra is as important as any of the very great architectural sites of the ancient world, and it is particularly significant as a site where trade routes and others came together and were welcome. Different gods are all accommodated here. It is a model for what our society used to have the ambitions to be. Therefore it should be considered as a most respected site. ISIS are perfectly aware of what they are destroying, and demonstrating our incapacity to act.
Can you imagine any possible strategy to protect from the threat of further damage if the unrest continues?
Actions rather than mealy-mouthed promises might help. ISIS and its agents are determined to destroy civilisation in favour of a realm without time, a tabula rasa that is merely a waiting place for their redemption. To them, everything other is an abomination, apostasy, heresy. This will only stop if civilisation, or ISIS, is annihilated.
M.W
Take a look at World
Some years ago Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas raised a critical voice about the architectural heritage culture, suggesting that too much preservation would stall the natural evolution of cities. That was before last year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, when criticism towards historical sites was a typical Koolhaas provocation, which made sense when thinking about his practice and their grand aspirations at the time. However, Koolhaas’ change of heart was already evident at the Biennale.
His latest project for the Prada fashion empire has been all about renovation – and what a renovation it is. A vast gallery created from a historic industrial building for the Prada arts foundation in Milan, it’s a collaboration where the client and architect have thought meticulously about each detail and material: from the tower covered in gold leaf to the way the statues are displayed. Koolhaas had already designed stores for Prada; the arts space marks a culmination in a shared stylistic vision, while looking beyond the ‘white cube’ gallery model.
The art centre offers a story about Prada as a patron and the values of the fashion house, showcasing the cutting edge against the most traditional art forms. For the inaugural exhibitions on classical sculpture Koolhaas investigated how the artworks change their meaning depending on the way they are exhibited. By hiding the pedestals Koolhaas aims to configure energy and movement that these figures had lost in the traditional display model. Inside the sculpture gallery, surrounded by floor to ceiling windows, artworks from antiquity, and their copies, are shown in a way that enhances their original movement. In the catalogue for the new exhibition Koolhaas explains:
“…each sculpture is extended, groupings can be formed, relationships suggested, sequences implied… The visitors move through the landscape, the fragility of the sculptures is respected by the shaping of the terrain…”
“The sculpture is inevitably a freeze frame of a moment of evident movement – forwards, sideways, or even backwards – but that movement is denied, sabotaged, deflated, aborted, and even contradicted by the pedestal. For many sculptures, the separation from the ground that the socle performs kills the energy of the work and subverts or undermines its meaning.”
Elsewhere the galleries continue through the vast former warehouse building, showing art from the 1970’s onwards, including contemporary stars such as Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, as well as a series of installations made of cars by Elmgreen & Dragset, Carsten Höller and Sarah Lucas. In these imposing rooms the white, neutral gallery walls are replaced by grey concrete surfaces providing a warmer, more tactile environment for the art.
The cafe by the entrance, designed by American film director Wes Anderson, has an outdoor terrace. It is a great stopover when visiting the large galleries in this former industrial neighbourhood of Milan.
The cafe interior is the antidote to the minimalist bar or restaurant usually found in museums. This cinematic space, decorated with a retro Pradaesque colour palette of cool pastels, is an element of surprise. Within the strong visual storytelling that underpins the fashion brand, there is always space for playfulness. With her husband Patrizio Bertelli, Miuccia Prada continues a trajectory of taste, lending high end fashion culture an intellectual edge. Koolhaas has created a space to house their personal art collection as well as an array of changing exhibitions and activities, which reflect the aesthetic values of understated, elegant luxury of the brand.
Spanish architectural studio Selgascano have brought a psychedelic play with colours and materials to the Serpentine Gallery lawns. The new Summer Pavilion, which opened this week, is the fifteenth commission in the history of the pavilions and one of the more controversial designs in recent years. Expectations rise each year and the unusual mix of artisanal and techno can seem confusing, especially here as the most highly finished attention to detail has been the norm.
The rainbow-coloured materials, stretched over the irregular pavilion structure, play with reflections even under grey skies. But it’s inside when the sun hits the surfaces, where the play with light really comes alive. José Selgas, who partners in the Madrid office with his wife Lucia Cano, says colour is just the outcome of their creative process where they try out different materials: “We don’t care about colour, we just play with absolute freedom”.
Cano talks about the engineered plastic ETFE material they used in two layers here: ”We have used it before, but in a very different way. Here we did experiments, we added the colour and the mirror effects.” Their approach is playful and dressed in youthful outfits with matching colour-coded details together they embody the new generation of architects. They explore materials, forms and technological possibilities, pushing the boundaries of how architecture is perceived. And that’s certainly what the pavilion is and should be for.
The couple have been working together since 1998. Selgas says they feel a strong connection to the Spanish architectural heritage, although in the pavilion design they wanted to acknowledge the fourteen works by the previous architects. He explains their contribution is part of a longer process where each architectural design communicates with the others. “It was important to do something different” he says. “We love the artisanal, the handcrafted touch and we didn’t think that it would be possible with this kind of commission, where it would need to be prefabricated. But we have been able to experiment “.
For Selgascano the pavilion is a work in progress, which will be in London until October, then dismantled and moved elsewhere. The sense of fun makes up for some of the flaws, although the architecture establishment might not be entirely convinced. But as José Selgas points out the pavilion concept is in a stage of transition and will evolve and change: “It’s the starting point for the next period”. Maybe in the future there will increasingly be young emerging talent with experimental ideas to further challenge the norms of the architectural community.
Last Saturday in Los Angeles London-based artist Hélène Binet received the prestigious Julius Shulman Award of Excellence 2015 in conjunction with the opening of her new exhibition Fragments of Light at the Woodbury University Hollywood Gallery. As an architectural photographer she has produced a large archive of images documenting buildings by leading contemporary architects such as Daniel Libeskind, Zaha Hadid and Peter Zumthor. Some of her most personal works focus on the play of light with form.
Binet continues shooting on film, which gives her images a certain richness and a depth in the details, something that is not possible to achieve in digital photography. She works with a large format camera, or a Hasselblad which is slightly easier to carry around, and likes the intensity and restriction that comes with the process of taking photographs on film. “I believe photography is about celebrating an instant. You say yes to it and commit yourself to that moment”, she explained at the preview of the exhibition Constructing Worlds at the Barbican in London. The exhibition, which opened in Stockholm last month at the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design, is an in-depth survey of the different ways the built environment has been used as a subject in documentary, fine art photography and photojournalism.
From Binet’s archive a series of images of the Jewish Museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind was selected for Constructing Worlds: “The curators chose the subject and they had a very precise idea – that’s why the show is so good”, she explained. Libeskind was an important inspiration for Binet at the start of her career and she was thrilled when she got the opportunity to photograph the Jewish Museum: “It’s an interesting program, the void and the light, something you experience very strongly in the building.” The display of black and white images include a series of nine small photographs, handprinted by Binet herself. “I like to do things by hand, to create an object, not just files. In the darkroom it’s a creative moment. For a big print I might do some digital adjustments about the contrast or the amount of light or dark, but it’s very strict”.
Binet’s work has been exhibited widely and includes also historic architecture (a series on Hawksmoor buildings, at Venice Biennale in 2012) and Le Corbusier. Her photographs demonstrate a particular understanding of architecture, inspired by the abstracted forms of Lucien Hervé, Le Corbusier’s trusted photographer, as well as paintings by Giotto and Vermeer. Of the many buildings Binet has photographed and experienced one of her favourite ones is the Therme Vals by Peter Zumthor (in the top image) in her native country Switzerland: “One of the structural elements there is the water – it’s quite amazing”
