10 busy days in LA
Bjarke Ingels, Terry Allen, Dave Hickey, Tadao Ando, Marianne Stockebrand, Robert Irwin, Ed Ruscha, Craig Dykers, and Iwan Baan…
My busy schedule started at LACMA’s Bing Theater with a lecture, built around the slogan "Hedonistic Sustainability," by Bjarke Ingels of BIG. Bjarke Ingel's lectures, a mixture of talk, music and videos, are always fun and well delivered. After the lecture there was a crowded reception at A+D Architecture and Design Museum across the street.
Photo: arcspace
Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic LA Times, and Bjarke Ingels.
Recent BIG projects include the Waste-to-Energy Plant in Copenhagen, that doubles as a ski slope, and the New National Gallery in Nuuk, Greenland. BIG attracted public attention and triggered political debate when he moved Denmark’s national symbol, the Little Mermaid, to China for six months as part of the Danish Pavilion for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010.
Image courtesy BIG
Waste-to-Energy Plant, Copenhagen, Denmark
Image courtesy BIG
New National Gallery, Nuuk, Greenland
Photo: Iwan Baan
Danish Pavilion, Shanghai World Expo 2010.
Book
Yes Is More:
An Archicomic on Architectural Evolution
By: Bjarke Ingels
“Yes is More” speaks the language of popular culture, allowing the sublime to shine through in the commonplace. It enables readers to gain insights into Big’s processes, methods and results through the most approachable and populist means of communication the cartoon.
The evening ended with drinks at the recently opened Stark Bar at LACMA. The bar is named after Ray Stark, the late film producer and former LACMA Trustee. The bar and restaurant completes Renzo Piano’s involvement at LACMA, and its design continues the architectural language echoed in his surrounding structures. The furnishing is mid-century....we sat in red “Eggs” by Arne Jacobsen.
Photo: arcspace
I always try to catch the intimate “Talks” at Art Catalogues at LACMA. This time for the celebration of the publication of “Terry Allen,” the first comprehensive retrospective of this prolific artist’s work. Terry Allen and author/art critic Dave Hickey continued their long-time conversation about Allen’s endlessly evolving art, installations, and music. Jo Harvey Allen read a piece from the epic “Dugout” series.
Photo: arcspace
Art Catalogues’ Dagny Corcoran with Dave Hickey and Terry Allen.
Photo: arcspace
Jo Harvey Allen, Dave Hickey, and Terry Allen
Book
Terry Allen
By: Terry Allen
Texts by Dave Hickey
"Finding one particular thing at one particular time, then letting a world accumulate around it, in rough contingency, nothing quite fitting or not fitting." This is how Dave Hickey describes the work of artist and singer-songwriter Terry Allen, who creates works that proliferate into a constellation of genres as he revisits and revises his original inspirations.
Went to the crowded opening of “Terry Allen - Ghost Ship Rodez: The Momo Chronicles” at LA Louver in Venice. Had to go back a couple of days later to see the works:)
The multi-dimensional exhibition includes two video/sculpture installations, a sound-based environment, and over a dozen multi-paneled works on paper. Allen pursues a fictional investigation of what may have happened in the mind of French artist, playwright and actor Antonin Artaud during a 17-day journey restrained in the dark hold of the freighter Washington in 1937, and later, in various mental institutions.
Photo: arcspace
Photo: arcspace
Next event was a rare lecture by Tadao Ando at the Hammer Museum. Kulapat Yantrasast, partner at wHY Architecture, translated for Ando. Prior to WHY Architecture Kulapat Yantrasast was an associate with Tadao Ando.
The auditorium was jammed and it was a beautiful night so we decided to watch the lecture on the big screen, surrounded by bamboo, in the atrium/garden. A perfect choice since we could enjoy a cool drink and watch Ando sign his new book. The other day I had a message from Ando’s office confirming he made it back to Japan slowly, but safely.
Photo: arcspace
Photo: arcspace
Tadao Ando is the only architect to have won the disciplines four most prestigious prizes: the Pritzker, Carlsberg, Praemium Imperiale, and Kyoto Prize. Combining influences from Japanese tradition with the best of Modernism, Ando has developed a completely unique building aesthetic that makes use of concrete, wood, water, light, space, and nature in a way that has never been witnessed in architecture.
Photo: arcspace
Sayamaike Historical Museum, Osaka, Japan
Photo: arcspace
Langen Foundation, Neuss, Germany
Book
Ando: Complete Works 1975-2010
Publisher: Taschen
This book, created at the height of Ando's illustrious career, and thoroughly updated for this new 2010 edition, presents his complete works to date. His designs include award-winning private homes, churches, museums, apartment complexes, and cultural spaces throughout Japan, as well as in France, Italy, Spain, and the USA.
Back again to Art Catalogues at LACMA to celebrate the publication of “Chinati: The Vision of Donald Judd” with Editor and former Chinati Director, Marianne Stockebrand.
Marianne Stockebrand and artist Robert Irwin talked about their experiences at Chinati, his concept for a large permanent installation there, and the long-term work-in-progress Palm Garden Irwin is designing for LACMA.
Photo: arcspace
Marianne Stockebrand and Robert Irwin.
Book
Chinati: The Vision of Donald Judd
Editor: Marianne Stockebrand
This handsome publication is the first comprehensive presentation of the Chinati Foundation’s collection in more than twenty years. The book describes how Judd developed his ideas of the role of art and museums from the early 1960s onward, culminating in the creation of Chinati. Judd’s installations at Marfa include 15 outdoor works in concrete and 100 aluminum pieces housed in two carefully renovated artillery sheds. The book also features writings by Judd relating to Chinati and Marfa, and a complete catalogue of the collection.
Stopped by ACE Gallery in Beverly Hills, one of my very favorite galleries, to see Robert Irwin’s column. In 1970 Irwin simplified his Venice, California studio, transforming it into a pristine space where he installed one work: a twelve-foot, clear acrylic column near the center of the room. With all distractions removed, Irwinʼs spacious studio and solitary sculpture presented a viewer with a visual silence, a pure situational experience. ACE Gallery Beverly Hills has installed a similar yet taller column, over 19 feet in height, in its main exhibition space, once again the only artwork in the space.
Photo: arcspace
Photo courtesy ACE Gallery
Untitled, 1970 Optical acrylic
“The column was an indication of my wanting to get out and treat the environment itself, I don't mean in the sense of building buildings or being an architect, but rather of dealing with the quality of a particular space in terms of its weight, its temperature, its tactileness, its density, its feel – all those semi-intangible things that we don't normally deal with.”
Robert Irwin, 1980
Also stopped by the recently expanded Larry Gagosian Gallery, designed by Richard Meier, to see ten new paintings by Ed Ruscha.
Photo: Douglas M. Parker Studio
Installation view
For these “Psycho Spaghetti Westerns” Ruscha has documented the effects of time on landscape in a manner that is both empirical and metaphorically charged, creating finely nuanced exercises in perception and memory that he describes as “waste and retrieval.”
Back to the Bing Theater at LACMA for a lecture by Norway’s Craig Dykers. Dykers is co-founder of Snøhetta, named after a mountain in Norway, with offices in Oslo and New York City. The firm has spearheaded major works worldwide, including over 200 projects in Asia, Africa, America and Europe.
Photo: arcspace
Dykers at the entrance to the theater.
Photo: arcspace
Dykers in front of Snøhetta
Most notable among Snøhetta's designs are the Library of Alexandria in Egypt, the Oslo Opera House, and most recently the soon to be completed National September 11th Memorial Museum Pavilion at the World Trade Center site in New York City.
Photo: Ibrahim Nafie
Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt
Photo © Statsbygg
Opera House, Oslo, Norway
An interesting lecture with great pictures and lots of amusing anecdotes. Dykers ended the lecture showing new projects in various phases as well as several projects for “non-humans” like...a fountain for a cat, a birds nest, and a platform for wild pregnant reindeer:)
Finally a reception for Iwan Baan at ACME. Iwan Baan’s photographs evolve around architecture and its effect on the context, using the built environment as a backdrop for intimate and timeless human stories that unfold in the foreground.
Photo: arcspace
Edwin Chan, Gehry Partners, Iwan Baan and Thom Mayne, Morphosis.
The exhibition showed selected photographs from two different mid-twentieth century utopian cities. One is Brasilia in central Brazil, and the other is Chandigarh in northern India. The photos are included in a new book that addresses the question of how modernism has been appropriated in both cities, and how the people who live in them deal with it. Commonalities and differences are identified and images of everyday urban life showcased.
Book
Iwan Baan
Brasilia-Chandigarh:
Living with Modernity
Photo: Iwan Baan
Photo: Iwan baan
I unfortunately missed the first “Raimund Abraham Memorial” Lecture by Steven Holl; built around the meaning of "ambiguity" in the works of the architect. Also missed “Peter Cook: Part 2 - The Forgotten Art of Architectural Composition.” Peter Cook was a founding member of the 1960s futurist group Archigram. Both lectures were at SCI Arc, my old school.....I must make sure to get back on their list.
Off to Copenhagen for Danish Architecture Center’s 25th Anniversary Party. Will Twitter from there.
BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group
Bjarke Ingels BIG arcspace features
Tadao Ando Architects
Tadao Ando arcspace features
Donald Judd: Furniture exhibition
Snøhetta
Snøhetta arcspace features
March 21, 2011
