Smooth MatterApril 19, 2013 - August 10, 2013MACKEY GARAGE TOP, 1137 S. Cochran Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90019
Smooth Matter, the third exhibition in the MAK Center's Garage Exchange Vienna - Los Angeles series, is created by architect, former resident, and professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Bernhard Sommer in collaboration with Los Angeles architect, professor and author Neil M. Denari. Sommer's interest in fluid forms and new fabrication technologies aligns with that of Denari, who has established an international career that rejects the Modernist machine aesthetic in favor of organic, free-form design.
Since the early 1990s, Denari has been a key proponent of smooth, free form surfaces generated via NURBS (non-uniform rational basis spline), mathematical representations of curves and three-dimensional forms used in computer modeling. Denari and others were inspired in part by the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, who in A Thousand Plateaus (1980) defined smooth space as "amorphous and not homogeneous...and connected by processes of frequency." Sommer and Denari explore the possibilities of striation in Smooth Matter. They begin with an initial two-dimensional surface and analyze it using NURBS, eventually generating volumetric matter. At the Garage Top, they present a series of flat hanging panels that stand across from their topological counterparts. The two-dimensional geometry of the initial surface serves as a resource that determines the three-dimensional quality of an architectural skin.
Admission to the exhibition is free, open Fridays & Saturdays, 11-6
Everything Loose Will LandMay 08, 2013 - August 04, 2013SCHINDLER HOUSE, 835 N. Kings Road, West Hollywood, CA 90069
Everything Loose Will Land is an exhibition exploring the cross-pollination that took place between architects and artists in Los Angeles in the 1970s, a time when the autonomy of art forms yielded to convergences, collaborations, borrowings and more. Part of the Getty initiative, Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A, it is the only exhibition explicitly to connect the series’ current focus on architecture with last year’s emphasis on the other visual arts.
The exhibition is curated by Sylvia Lavin, Director of Critical Studies and MA/PhD Programs, UCLArchitecture, and features projects by Peter Alexander, Carl Andre, Eleanor Antin, Archigram, Billy Al Bengston, Larry Bell, Denise Scott Brown, Judy Chicago, Peter de Bretteville, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Environmental Communications, Frank Gehry, Gruppo 9999, Victor Gruen, Craig Hodgetts, Andrew Holmes, Nancy Holt, Robert Irwin, Ray Kappe, Robert Kennard, Allan Kaprow, Ed Kienholz, Alison Knowles, Leonard Koren, L.A. Fine Arts Squad, Morphosis, Ed Moses, Bruce Nauman, Maria Nordman, Peter Jon Pearce, Cesar Pelli, Jef Raskin, Ed Ruscha, SITE, Robert Smithson, Paolo Soleri, StudioWorks, Bernard Tschumi, Venturi & Rauch, and others.
A wide variety of both well known and never before seen works of different media, including Untitled (Equilateral Triangle), a large-scale outdoor sculpture by Bruce Nauman from 1980; an interactive installation of Bloxes by Jef Raskin; a portion of Curved Space Playground Structure, an elaborate cellular crawl structure made from polycarbonate plastic with aluminum struts by product designer Peter Jon Pearce from 1980; and a selection of models and drawings from the Gehry Architects archive.
Taking its name from the notorious Frank Lloyd Wright quip, "Tip the world on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles," the exhibition argues that L.A.'s infamous "looseness" provided a medium for exciting developments in art and architecture. Breaking out of the traditional strictures that governed their practices, artists and architects mingled freely and adopted methodologies from one another. Artworks increasingly came to resemble architecture, and architects began to produce objects independent of the building process. Artists and architects alike explored commercial tools, industrial materials and new photographic processes, extending the realm of possibilities for both fields. Audiences became active participants in art and design and the city itself, made increasingly volatile by both social upheaval and environmental crisis, became an essential material in cultural production of all types.The exhibition presents drawings, photographs, media works, sculpture, prototypes, models, and ephemera, seen throughout the Schindler House and its grounds.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a full color 272 page publication, with critical essays by Lavin, Margo Handwerker, Alex Kitnick, Suzy Newbury, Peggy Phelan, and Simon Sadler; and period documents by Robert Ballard; Reyner Banham; Billy Al Bengston; Denise Scott Brown; Judy Chicago; Barry Commoner; Peter de Bretteville; Environmental Communications; Victor Gruen and Claudia Moholy Nagy; Rem Koolhaas; Leonard Koren; Janice M. Lester; Peter Plagens; and Bernard Tschumi.
Everything Loose Will Land is part of Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A. This collaboration, initiated by the Getty, brings together several local arts institutions for a wide-ranging look at the postwar built environment of the city as a whole, from its famous residential architecture to its vast freeway network, revealing the city's development and ongoing impact in new ways.
Major support for the Everything Loose Will Land exhibition and catalog has been provided by the Getty Foundation.
The catalog for Everything Loose Will Land was made possible by the generous support of Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown.
