Archinect - News

Coachella debuts 2024 art installations, its ‘largest immersive and architectural works yet’

2024-04-16T11:43:00-04:00

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival has completed work on the 2024 edition of its on-site art program. The acclaimed event is taking place across two weekends: April 12–14 and 19–21.

The three artistic works are described by the festival as "redefining the boundaries of large-scale art, inviting festival-goers to engage with visionary works that ask viewers to question their definition of self, explore the boundaries between reality and imagination & take part in creating a new future together."

"Monarchs: A House in Six Parts" by HANNAH. Image credit: Lance Gerber

"Monarchs: A House in Six Parts" by HANNAH explores the fusion of 3D printing with traditional craftsmanship, comprising a series of pavilions that “invite interaction and contemplation.” A collaboration between Cornell University professors Leslie Lok and Sasa Zivkovic, the piece reimagines architectural design through the lens of digital fabri...

Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama debuts 'Purple Hibiscus' at the Barbican, a reference to the site's material history

2024-04-12T16:33:00-04:00

The Barbican has debuted a new large-scale public art installation from Ghanaian-born artist Ibrahim Mahama.

His site-specific piece Purple Hibiscus, named in reference to the 2003 novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is installed on the facade of the Barbican’s central Lakeside Terrace. It uses approximately 21,500 square feet of fuschia-hued cloth that contrasts dramatically with the rough concrete exterior and overcast London sky.

Installation view, 'Ibrahim Mahama: Purple Hibiscus.' Image: © Dion Barrett / Barbican Centre

Mahama created the piece in collaboration with artisans from his Red Clay Studio and Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art in the city of Tamale, Ghana. It references the site's past history as the epicenter of the "rag trade" in Central London before World War II. Together, both the piece and architecture serve as a metaphor for the "power of labor."

Installation view, 'Ibrahim Mahama: Purple Hibiscus.' Image: © Dion Barrett / Barbican Centre

The artist describes...

JR debuts latest Italian commission 'La Nascita' for Milan Design Week

2024-04-11T13:03:00-04:00

French street art pioneer JR has debuted his latest piece, a massive illusory trompe l’oeil piece animating the facade of Milan’s Stazione Centrale railway station, in advance of the start of Milan Design Week in the Italian cultural nexus.

His latest commission is titled La Nascita (Italian for “the birth”) and will run until May 1st, following two previous Italian projects at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence and Palazzo Farnese in Rome that were completed in 2021.

“In spaces that have social issues, my work is about bringing people together. In a place like this, a huge range of people come to catch the train. When they find themselves in front of an exhibition, they will suddenly have a different kind of interaction,” he told The Art Newspaper at its unveiling.

More of our coverage of Milan Design Week can be found here.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by JR (@jr)

Artist Mary Miss files suit to stop demolition of outdoor installation at Des Moines Art Center

2024-04-09T17:42:00-04:00

Artist Mary Miss has filed a lawsuit in an ongoing dispute over the planned demolition of her outdoor installation Greenwood Pond: Double Site (1996) at the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa.

A district court subsequently decided to issue a temporary restraining order against the institution’s plans, which were to be enacted on April 8th of this year.

Greenwood Pond-Double Site, Des Moines, IA, 1996. Photo © Mary Miss courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Miss, who is considered a leading figure of the Land Art movement, filed the legal challenge after The Cultural Landscape Foundation divulged the Art Center’s “secret plans” to deconstruct and remove the installation from its grounds over the deterioration of its materials and presumed adversity of potential repairs.

Greenwood Pond-Double Site, Des Moines, IA, Dec. 2023. Courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Miss is alleging a breach of contract as part of the suit, citing a 1994 agreement and seeking damages through a readi...

Richard Serra, monumental steel sculptor and inspiration to many architects, has died at 85

2024-03-27T11:20:00-04:00

Richard Serra has died. The 85-year-old sculptor who made architecture more or less a permanent condition of his art was known for inventing a process for bending corten steel to create works he explained were about eliciting sensation and intended to display the unseen physical forces of nature.

More than any other contemporary artist (Sarah Sze, Robert Irwin, Richard Estes, etc.) whose work is informed by or makes as its subject architecture, Serra’s use of steel as a means of organizing space and sequencing experience within it is, arguably, the greatest primer for any learner embarking on academic studies in the field.

He began his experimentations first with rubber before advancing to cast lead and then finally steel, a material whose properties and building potential he understood innately thanks to time spent working in steel mills during his early years in California. The opportunity to study art at Yale University changed his life thereafter.

Serra's 'Bend' sculpture at the...

In an Ontario plaza, interactive pavements play music ‘as if by magic’

2024-02-28T13:28:00-05:00

Montreal-based studio Daily tous les jours has completed a public space design in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. Titled 'River Lines,' the project saw the creation of an interactive stage in an urban plaza for big impromptu musical ensembles.

Video credit: doublespace photography

Part of the studio’s wider Musical Pavement series, the interactive wave-patterned pavement is embedded with 62 sensing light rings that “get people moving through musical collaboration exercises.” The infrastructure is formed of twelve in-house tailored audio tiles that have no visible hardware and blend with the wider pavement pattern, meaning “music emanates from the ground as if by magic.”

Image credit: doublespace photography

Located on the site of a 19th-century foundry, the artwork is “a response to the historical nature of the site” and “an exemplar of how investment in the public realm is essential to reimagine and activate places and encourage collective interacti...

The Motorist Won: Envisioning a vehicle-centric UK with Archinect Generative Futures finalist Kyle Branchesi

2024-02-13T19:32:00-05:00

Designer Kyle Branchesi has shared images from his latest creative experimentation with generative AI tools, a visual commentary touching on the debate over pedestrianism and motor vehicles happening currently within the UK.

For 'The Motorist Won,' Branchesi imagined a far-off dystopia plagued by vehicle traffic where historic streets and all visible landmarks are besieged by the hum of engines and blur of lights, making cities like London or Edinburgh the all-too-unfortunate casualties of what PM Rishi Sunak says is a "war" against cars.

The Motorist Won by Kyle Branchesi

Branchesi describes: "Amidst a political landscape where the 'war on motorists' is wielded as a populist tool, this series captures a future where this rhetoric has prevailed. The transformation of UK landmarks like Stonehenge into vast vehicular realms underscores the absurdity and danger of prioritizing short-term political gains over sustainable urban planning. These images mirror the contentious debates in the ...

Banksy murals to be digitally preserved as part of new UK art database

2024-02-09T14:28:00-05:00

Art by the famous artist Banksy is to be included in a new initiative to document the UK’s murals. As reported by The Art Newspaper, the project will see more than 5,000 murals from across the UK digitally recorded for access in a free public database.

The project is being overseen by the educational charity Art UK with support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The three-year initiative will see public works recorded by a network of volunteer researchers and photographers, alongside documenting the stories behind the pieces.

“The location of murals, the circumstances behind their creation, and the materials used to create them can result in this type of artwork being ephemeral in nature,” Art UK says about the project. “Buildings and housing estates are demolished to make way for new developments meaning that many murals have been lost. We will record the murals as they look now, to provide a record if they are removed, defaced, or suffer environmental damage.”

Related on Arc...

Antoni Gaudí’s Casa Batlló overlaid with AI-informed artwork by Sofia Crespo

2024-01-30T11:46:00-05:00

Antoni Gaudí’s Casa Batlló in Barcelona has served as the host for a major projection mapping artwork by Sofia Crespo over the weekend. Titled Structures of Being, the event drew 95,000 visitors across its showing on January 27th and 28th.

Image credit: Claudia Maurino

Created by Crespo with music by Robert M. Thomas, the project is described by organizers as “a spectacular setting that immersed the public in the nature contained inside Casa Batlló as well as in Gaudí's creative universe.” Created with the aid of artificial intelligence and the Barcelona Supercomputer Center, the project used data on the behavior of marine currents.

Image credit: Claudia Maurino

The artwork draws on Crespo’s interest in the boundaries of human perception in addition to her research into Gaudí’s own sources of inspiration. The resulting methodology saw Crespo use artificial neural networks to extract visual patterns from data inspired by the bra...

Art performance at Tadao Ando's concrete MPavilion features grayscale gelato

2024-01-26T17:26:00-05:00

An exciting and tasty art performance has taken shape at the Tadao Ando-designed MPavilion in Melbourne, Australia.

It comes in the form of grayscale gelato, created by Brazilian artist João Loureiro in collaboration with local creamery Piccolina Gelateria. The treat is available in six different flavors, each a different shade of gray ranging from light gray to nearly black. No flavors are labeled, stimulating a unique and surprising sensory experience with pavilion visitors during the Australian summer months.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Piccolina Gelateria (@piccolinagelateria)

The gelato colors mirror the pavilion’s aesthetic, which comprises enclosed concrete perimeter walls and an aluminum-clad, single-column main structure and roof.

Related: Tadao Ando's MPavilion opens in Melbourne. Image: Beatrice Eckermann

As stated by MPavilion, "...this work questions our sense of comfort and forces us to rethink associations that have been rooted in u...

Refik Anadol creates ‘world first’ AI model trained on data from nature instead of humans

2024-01-15T11:35:00-05:00

Refik Anadol Studio has announced the creation of the “world’s first open-source generative AI model dedicated to nature.” Titled 'Large Nature Model,' the model is trained “solely on nature’s inherent intelligence” as opposed to the conventional approach to AI large language model training, which consists of human-generated data such as art and text.

To train the model, Anadol’s studio used open-access information from institutions including the Smithsonian Institution and London’s Natural History Museum alongside various other universities, museums, foundations, government entities, and libraries. The studio is also visiting 16 rainforest locations around the world, deploying data collection technologies such as LiDAR, photogrammetry, and the capturing of ambisonic audio and high-resolution visuals of diverse ecosystems to further train the model.

“Our vision for the Large Nature Model goes beyond being a repository or a creative research initiative,” said Refik Anadol about the m...

Janet Echelman completes rippling sculpture in Riyadh informed by earthquake and tsunami data

2024-01-12T13:52:00-05:00

Janet Echelman has completed a sculpture in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as part of the artist’s Earthtime series.

Named Earthtime 1.26 Riyadh, and installed in the city’s Wadi Namar in December 2023 for the Noor Riyadh light art festival, the sculpture “celebrates the interconnection of sky and earth, flexibility and strength, humans and our physical world, bridging opposites with bold colors and soft curves,” according to the artist.

Image credit: Janet Echelman

Image credit: Ahmed Hasan

The sculpture is composed of knotted fibers, and designed so that as a single knot moves in the wind, the location of every other knot in the sculpture’s surface is changed in what the artist describes as “an ever-unfolding dance of human-made creation with the forces of nature beyond our control.” The custom-engineered fibers are fifteen times stronger than steel by weight and were knotted and spliced with the help of centuries-old craft techniques.

Image credit: Janet Echelman

Image credit: Janet Echelma...

Plans for new LACMA-backed Las Vegas art museum emerge

2023-12-27T08:00:00-05:00

Around three years after the Nevada Museum of Art (NMA) in Reno suspended its plans to move forward with a Las Vegas branch of the museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the foundation of the philanthropist Elaine P. Wynn have announced an unprecedented partnership to launch a new museum in the city called the Las Vegas Museum of Art (LVMA).

As The Art Newspaper reported, plans for a new Las Vegas Museum of Art have the approximately 60,000-90,000-square-foot cultural facility commence in 2028 and cost around $150 million to construct in five-acre Symphony Park. LACMA is supporting the effort, which will (hopefully) fill the void left after the first Las Vegas Museum of Art closed its doors in 2009 over a lack of funding. Backers now have until 2025 to submit a design proposal and project timeline to the city.

“Our efforts to work with local and regional museums to share our collections and programs to larger and more diverse audiences are a priority in this joint effort,” a spokesperson for LACMA told TAN. “Las Vegas is currently the only city among the 30 largest in the U.S. to lack a standalone art museum [that is not a member of American Alliance of Museums]. It promises to be a valuable addition to the city and the cultural landscape of the region.”

No architects have been named to the project at this time.

...

London’s Battersea Power Station hosts giant Christmas tree animation by artist David Hockney

2023-12-06T13:10:00-05:00

The world-renowned artist David Hockney has lit up London’s iconic Battersea Power Station with a giant installation resembling two Christmas trees. Titled ‘Bigger Christmas Trees’ and set on the station’s two north-facing 328-foot-tall chimneys, the animation will be on display from December 1st until Christmas Day, December 25th.

“Battersea Power Station is such a beautiful building, I wanted to decorate it in a way that I hoped would bring joy and hope to Londoners,” said Hockney about the scheme.

Image credit: Apple

The 10-minute animation was designed by Hockney on an iPad using a digital pencil; an appropriate method given that Battersea Power Station currently houses Apple’s UK headquarters.

In June, we reported on the opening of Foster + Partners’ Apple Store within the station, marking the company’s 40th store in the United Kingdom. Late last year, meanwhile, we covered a review of the newly completed WilkinsonEyre interior spaces in the station alongside a Frank Gehry-desig...

Johnston Marklee completes renovation of Roy Lichtenstein's studio into a new home for the Whitney Independent Study Program

2023-10-27T17:37:00-04:00

The Whitney Museum of American Art has shared news of a recently completed conversion project from Johnston Marklee in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan.

The former studio and home of famed New York School painter Roy Lichtenstein at 741/745 Washington Street is now the new permanent home for the Whitney’s 55-year-old Independent Study Program (ISP), which counts Donald Judd and Jenny Holzer among its many alumni.

Image courtesy Max Touhey

A new third level was added to the existing structure to accommodate the year-round slate of activities, creating an 11,000-square-foot space. The building also doubles as a host for the museum’s Education department in the summer when the ISP is out of session.

Image courtesy Filip Wolak

“Thanks to Roy, this building has been the site for artistic and intellectual endeavors, both for himself and for the people who have long gathered here. I can’t think of a more meaningful use for the studio than for the Whitney to carry his legacy f...

Groundbreaking conceptual artist Robert Irwin dies at 95

2023-10-26T15:35:00-04:00

Robert Irwin, a pioneering conceptual artist and leading figure of the Light and Space movement whose work had significant influences in architecture, passed away last night in San Diego. He was 95.

Irwin helped push the boundaries of American post-war art with his understanding of the principles of design. Along with a cohort of artists like James Turrell, Richard Serra, Larry Bell, and Donald Judd, Irwin worked to constantly challenge the perception of his viewers. He left behind painting to pursue a “conditional art” that espoused a further shift away from pictorial composition and towards the responsiveness of art objects to the context of a site.

Irwin’s collaborative site-conditioned work with institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, Dia Art Foundation, and LACMA set new precedents for the inclusion of living artists in a museum’s program, the influence of which today can be seen in the careers of Marina Abramović and Isaac Julien, among others. Irwin was also ...

Iconic Parisian cathedral transformed into ‘sensory nighttime exploration’ by multimedia company Moment Factory

2023-10-26T12:53:00-04:00

Montreal-based Moment Factory has completed an immersive multimedia experience inside the iconic Dôme des Invalides in Paris. The project, titled 'AURA Invalides,' consists of a 50-minute experience combining video mapping, lighting, special effects, orchestral music, and sound design to celebrate the building’s architectural and historical heritage.

Image credit: Moment Factory

Conceived in 2019 by cultural operator Cultival in collaboration with Musée de l’Armée, the project seeks to create a “sensory nighttime exploration” in which visitors wander through the Dôme des Invalides and its six chapels guided by light. The experience is divided into three acts, each portraying a distinct facet of the site: “its construction, the memories it harbors, and its power to inspire one and all.”

Image credit: Moment Factory

To project an experience onto the main dome, which measures 295 feet high and 98 feet at its smallest diameter, the t...

Refik Anadol's Machine Hallucinations generative AI piece acquired by MoMA

2023-10-11T15:59:00-04:00

Refik Anadol has made history as one of two prominent digital artists to have their works acquired into the permanent collection of the 94-year-old Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City.

The museum announced its acquisition of Anadol’s 2022 Generative AI piece Unsupervised – Machine Hallucinations, along with the blockchain-based piece 3FACE. 2022 from artist Ian Cheng, this week. Anadol's work was a gift to the museum by the 1OF1 Collection (which is led by Ryan Zurrer) and the RFC Collection, which is led by Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile and Desiree Casoni.

Writing on Instagram, Anadol commended the museum’s curatorial decision, saying it “inscribes a historic chapter as MoMA welcomes the first Generative AI and tokenized artwork into its esteemed permanent collection.” The work was one of three made for last year’s special solo exhibition using a machine learning algorithm to interpret publicly available data taken from the museum’s collection to produce reinterpreted images that...

Take a look inside Magazzino Italian Art's new minimalist Robert Olnick Pavilion

2023-10-05T12:26:00-04:00

Alberto Campo Baeza and Miguel Quismondo of MQ Architecture have delivered a new 13,000-square-foot expansion to the ten-acre campus of Magazzino Italian Art in Cold Spring, New York.

Sited on the grounds perpendicular to Quismondo’s existing L-shaped main museum building from 2017, the Robert Olnick Pavilion repeats the scale, cornice lines, layout, and materiality of the older structure while adding much-needed room for educational and events programming in time for the start of the fall arts season. The pavilion was inaugurated in September, joining OMA and Cooper Roberston’s new AKG Art Museum expansion in Buffalo as one of the most important American cultural and museum sector commissions of the year.

Photo by Javier Callejas. Courtesy Magazzino Italian Art.

The scheme is designed to showcase the museum’s arte provera, Murano glass, and ceramics holdings, with two airy, light-filled galleries complemented by another cube-like “isotropic room” from Baeza elevated above the main v...

LACMA and Snapchat unveil third Monumental Perspectives AR collection across Los Angeles

2023-09-09T08:00:00-04:00

The third collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)’s ongoing Augmented Reality Monumental Perspectives series has been unveiled to the public, featuring works of five artists that offer insights into the histories of their own unique pockets of LA’s patchwork mosaic of communities.

The series’ final trove includes Victoria Fu, Yassi Mazandi, Rashaad Newsome, Rubén Ortiz Torres, and Alison Saar. Each is accessible through Snapchat’s Lens Explorer tab. The initiative is being funded as part of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s larger $250 million The Monuments Project project. LACMA President Michael Govan says each work “challenges us to examine the individual and communal legacies we are leaving today and how we are shaping the future of Los Angeles.”

Rubén Ortiz Torres, Dead Heads (2023). Image courtesy Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Yassi Mazandi, The Thirty Birds (2023). Image courtesy Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Fu will offer a virtual take on a subject,...

Refik Anadol previews new AI data sculpture installation for Las Vegas Sphere

2023-08-31T17:54:00-04:00

A new AI Data Sculpture installation from Refik Anadol has been unveiled ahead of its public premiere tomorrow, September 1st, at the newly-complete Sphere entertainment venue in Las Vegas.

The sculpture utilizes the structure’s Exosphere, a digital canvas covering that can be programmed to display content thanks to its world-leading array of 1.2 million different LED ‘pucks’ which are spaced 8 inches apart to form an almost 580,000-square-foot display.

Anadol says: “It’s so exciting to be given such an architectural and engineering marvel as a canvas. This opportunity aligns perfectly with our studio’s long-term mission of embedding media arts into architecture to create living architectural pieces that are in constant interaction with their environments.”

Rendering courtesy Refik Anadol Studio

The latest in his Machine Hallucinations series will offer viewers a meditative and elaborate multisensory experience based on accumulated local atmospheric data that are consolidated and th...

Maya Lin unveils 'Ghost Forest Seedlings' generative art project

2023-08-18T13:06:00-04:00

The artist, architect, and environmentalist Maya Lin is set to release her inaugural generative art project. Titled Ghost Forest Seedlings, and produced by Pace Verso with Web3 art innovators E.A.T_WORKS, the work will be released on September 18 to align with Climate Week NYC.

Ghost Forest Seedlings builds on Lin’s 2021 Ghost Forest installation, which saw 50 Atlantic white cedar trees placed in Madison Square Park to highlight Earth's fragility amidst the climate crisis. The latest artworks, each priced at $1,000, depict a seed or group of seeds that grow into an intricate root pattern over a predetermined amount of time. Each of the 500 unique works from the project will include three components: a signed print of the final root system, a generative NFT that shows the seedling’s evolution in real-time, and a video timelapse tracing the seedling’s complete growth pattern.

Portrait of Maya Lin. Image credit: Pace Gallery

“With Ghost Forest Seedlings, Lin explores the organic growth ...

Monument Lab announces major new commission on the National Mall in Washington

2023-07-26T15:49:00-04:00

Philadelphia-based studio Monument Lab has been announced as the curatorial leader of a new public art installation on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

The pilot exhibition of the Trust’s new Beyond Granite series will be on view for a month (August 18th to September 18th) and feature a response to the program’s thematic question about whose stories “remain untold” at the important site using a selection of six prototype monuments designed by artists Wendy Red Star, Derrick Adams, vanessa german, Ashon T. Crawley, Tiffany Chung, and Paul Ramírez Jonas.

Monument Lab founding Director Paul Farber and last year’s Pulitzer Prize for Criticism winner Salamishah Tillet are co-curating the exhibition and say it will treat the monuments as “a statement of power and presence in public.”

“Beyond Granite: Pulling Together builds out platforms for artist-led civic engagement, historical interpretation, and storytelling as a means for advancing what it means to imagine, build, live, and g...

See photos from Harlem Grown and Jerome Haferd / BRANDT : HAFERD's newly-opened 'Sankofa' installation

2023-07-24T17:53:00-04:00

New York-based artists collective Harlem Grown, in collaboration with Jerome Haferd of BRANDT : HAFERD, has shared photos of the new ‘Sankofa’ installation in Harlem’s historic Marcus Garvey Park just months after the announcement of a two-year community-led commission aimed at creating an artistic public gathering space for residents of the area.

Image courtesy Anna Dave

The installation is part of the Mellon Foundation’s Culture, Creativity, & Care Initiative focused on Marcus Garvey Park and the cultural traditions of the community that it serves.

Image courtesy Anna Dave

Harlem Grown shares: "The project involved planning and collaboration with local artists and makers across various artistic styles and media. Despite its bespoke appearance, the installation is based on a modular system and uses sturdy, reusable materials that can be reconfigured for a number of future uses or sites."

Image courtesy Anna Dave

The design of the circular 32-foot canopied struc...

Photos of MAD Architects' artistic nexus, The City of Time

2023-06-28T17:15:00-04:00

MAD Architects has shared new images of its recently completed temporary The City of Time installation for the Aranya Theater Festival in China.

The project, which ran from June 12th to June 25th in the seaside resort community, brought together 300 artists and 131 group works under one maze-like design that dissolved after standing on the beach for a period of 300 hours.

Image courtesy Aranya Theater Festival

Using verse and meter, the firm described its intentions for the installation as follows:

The City of Time,
Dissolves after 300 hours.
Revolving around an axis perpendicular to the sea,
It offers a spiritual roost for creators.

In real cities,
The need for functionality suffocates spiritual spaces.
Building a fanciful city by the sea,
Allows the substance of theatre and art,
To breathe natural life into this space.

Taking flight and transcending reality,
It is a place dedicated to time, human behavior, and nature,
Inspiring contemplation on our relationships with ourselves and the wor...

Harlem Grown and BRANDT : HAFERD's 'Sankofa' will take over Marcus Garvey Park this summer

2023-06-13T18:47:00-04:00

A new public art installation will kick off the Mellon Foundation-funded Culture, Creativity, & Care Initiative in Harlem this summer with an engaging reflection of the history of Marcus Garvey Park and the cultural craft traditions of the various communities which surround it.

Friday, June 16th, will mark the grand opening of “Sankofa,” a circular 32-foot structure that serves as an art gallery and public gathering space for residents of the neighborhood who will meet underneath its mesh fabric canopy’s complex composition print.

Image courtesy Harlem Grown and Jerome Haferd

The project was initiated by the Black-led artists collective Harlem Grown and Jerome Haferd of BRANDT : HAFERD. The design team describes:

“‘Sankofa’ is the first outdoor hub to be unveiled as part of the initiative. ‘Sankofa’ derives from the Akan African folklore, symbolizing remembrance of things forgotten, and means ‘in order to know our future we must look to...

Janet Echelman’s 229-foot-long floating Current installation debuts in Columbus, Ohio

2023-06-07T18:38:00-04:00

Artist Janet Echelman’s soft-fiber Current installation premiered over the weekend in Columbus, Ohio, adding the city to a list of others to have showcased her experiments with site-specific sculptures and computational design since 2009.

Stretching to a total of 126 feet at its zenith, the 229-foot-long sculpture is made from 78 miles of twine strewn into more than 550,000 individual knots and cast from the facades of buildings located at the intersection of Gay and High Streets.

Echelman says she “absorbed” herself in Columbus’ local history for the creation of the commission, which has seen antecedents installed in Oslo, Santiago, New York, and other major metropolises on three continents so far.

She describes further: “I witnessed exceptional cooperation to achiev...

David Adjaye previews his Asaase III earthwork installation for COUNTERPUBLIC in St. Louis

2023-06-02T13:51:00-04:00

It’s very significant. In terms of personal meaning, I have approached it as a kind of meditation and reflection on the idea of deep time—planetary and galaxy time that is beyond the human timeline. Asaase III is, in a way, a representation of how I imagine an ideal city—a city that is in symbiosis with the Earth, acknowledging it and honoring it in a very deep way, but also absolutely transforming it and creating new features.

The new (permanent) addition to the Griot Museum of Black History is Adjaye’s second foray into rammed earth sculpture, following a 2021 installation at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. COUNTERPUBLIC curator Allison Glenn says the commission was born of her desire to connect the museum to the history of land use and the story of architecture in the community — in addition to Adjaye’s previous U.S. museum designs.

Adjaye says he was motivated to use materials as a means of invoking historical reference in light and also breaking us from our lost sense of place in universal spacetime, adding his concern that "Artifice has taken over our sense of reverence for the Earth."

The three-month COUNTERPUBLIC exhibition is on view in St. Louis until July 15th.

Davidson College unveils plans for a new memorial to enslaved and exploited people, led by Hank Willis Thomas and Perkins&Will

2023-06-01T12:17:00-04:00

Davidson College has unveiled its plans for a new memorial to the enslaved and exploited people whose hands built the 186-year-old liberal arts institution. The design effort of the sculpture titled “With These Hands: A Memorial to the Enslaved and Exploited” will be led by Perkins&Will in collaboration with Hank Willis Thomas.

The artist of Boston's new commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King will deliver a similar monumental bronze sculpture that emerges prominently from a refuge-like space nearby the campus’s original Oak and Elm buildings.

Thomas was selected for the commission following a two-year search process led by alumni that reflects similar reconciliation efforts at Brown University, The College of William & Mary, UNC Chapel Hill, and perhaps most notably, the Höweler+Yoon project at the University of Virginia spearheaded by alumna Mabel O. Wilson.

The Met announces Nairy Baghramian for its Fall 2023 Facade Commission

2023-04-11T13:57:00-04:00

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced Iranian-born German artist Nairy Baghramian as the next participant in its Fall 2023 Facade Commission series.

Baghramian follows Carol Bove, Wangechi Mutu, and last year’s Hew Locke for the fourth installment of the series, which first began in 2019 under the auspices of museum Director Max Hollein.

The museum says: “These projects are the latest in The Met’s series of contemporary commissions in which the Museum invites artists to create new works of art, establishing a dialogue between the artist's practice, The Met collection, the physical Museum, and The Met's audiences.”

Baghramian, also the winner of the 2022 Nasher Prize, will install four abstract polychromatic sculptures as part of the commission. Working in the blank niches left behind after Richard Hunt Morris was unable to complete his work on the museum in 1902, the sculptures are said to have components that evoke images of flotsam and will be titled Scratching the Back.

R...