Awash

 Fort Tyron Park; Spring 2012

Mark Bradford - Chicago MCA

I have long been struck by the work of the Situationist International, and this survey of Mark Bradford's work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago was an instant connection to that movement. 

"They imbue you with this sense of security, and at the same time they are deeply, deeply flawed."  Bradford's response to this disconcerting reality are these collaged representations of his experience as a "modern day flaneur."  I am reminded of SI psychogeographic interventions, of using a London map to navigate the Harz region of Germany. Or jumping ahead a few decades to Michel de Certeau's practice of "Walking in the City," and the creations of one's own geographies through mere movement through space.  These works are both beautiful and thought provoking-- complex questions grounded in, and responding to, the false security of the mappable, "image-able" city.

Please excuse the poor quality of the photos, they were hastily taken at this exhibit in June.
see more at:  http://mcachicago.org/exhibitions/past/2011/239

king of storms

Fall 2010, Storm King Art Center, NY

Creating a Language

Linda Pollak's "Cuts and Patches" from Urban Omnibus, 2010.

These images, which were compiled from the sidewalks of lower Manhattan, appear as a surprisingly consistent set of geometric configurations.  There may not yet be a semiotic association with these found objects, but they remind me of the book, A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander.  I can't seem to find many images of the book online, but here is an excerpt entry on Alexander's website.  What is the symbology of the sidewalk's "cuts and patches"?  How can we come to read the ordinary as something more extraordinary?

I am impressed by the beauty these patterns assume when published as such, and I am taken by Pollak's assertion that "As a designer, the more you can make sense of the diversity of the physical environment, the more chance you have to enable others to make new sense of it." I'll toast to that.

Miniature Worlds

In my sculpture class this morning we were prepping for presentations on our semester final: "SITE."  More on my idea later (it involves periscopes and is situated in Kevin Roche's Center for the Arts at Wesleyan), but I have been inspired by my childhood fascination with the Thorne Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago.

These rooms give the most detailed entry to another time, another world, from the perspective of a larger-than life voyeur.  As kid you could stand on a ledge, tip-toe as high as posssible, and look into the meticulously placed artifacts, all rendered to extreme accuracy and no bigger than your thumbnail. 

I loved it.  I wanted to recreate them.  I didn't care about playing with dolls themselves, but I wanted the dollhouse.  To that end, I went about creating furniture that would be fit for a small fairy, and complete with miniature french toast for breakfasts-in-beds.

Now I would love to make miniature to-scale models of some of Roche's modernist influences on his work at Wesleyan, such as Mies van der Rohe's Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago or Erik Gunnar Asplund's Woodland Cemetery in Stolkhom.  But for now I'll just have to settle for more views into 19th century English homes.

More Thorne Rooms from the Knoxville Museum of Art on this flickr photostream.