Last spring, Mies van der Rohe's Haus Lange in Krefeld was the subject of artist John Baldessari's playful work described as “contra-Mies”.
Last spring, Mies van der Rohe's Haus Lange in Krefeld was the subject of artist John Baldessari's playful work described as “contra-Mies”. MUSEUM HAUS LANGE | video clip
"Baldessari structured his Krefeld exhibition essentially as a work relating to the location or the architecture. The artist calls his concept for Haus Lange “contra-Mies”. Point of departure for him was the physical structure of the brick building. On the one hand he has focused on what for Mies was the source of a confrontation with his client: Mies vainly attempted to increase the extent of the building's outside glazing in order to increase the desired permeability between inside and out. However, the artist has used the former Bauhaus master's own idea quite pointedly against him: he has completely obscured the windows with pictures of bricks. At the same time though, he has intriguingly restored the connection between inside and outside by likewise covering the interior walls with brick wallpaper - in an extension of Mies's ideas that takes them to their logical and absurd extreme! To top it all, the artist has placed photographs of Californian land- and seascapes on the inside of the windows: as simulacra of the Miesian view through the window, these scenes bring about a complete dislocation of the building inside while at the same time simulating a link between the Lower Rhine and the artist's home in California. Anti-Miesian furnishings in the form of an Ear-Couch, decorated with two vases shaped like noses (Nose Sconces), are complemented on the outside by a winking win-dow eye: ironic apercus that are further crowning points of this intervention."
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