Curatorial
2008 Maximum Exposure 2008, Gallery 1313, Toronto
2008 Refractions, Ryerson Gallery, Toronto
2006 Buildings That Spin, p|m Gallery, Toronto
2006 Fuse New Media Festival, Ryerson School of Image Arts, Toronto
Photographic
2007 - 2008 Views From My Balcony
2007 - 2008 Environmental Portraits
Writing
2008 Review - Give It Up (Toronto vs. Buffalo) at p|m Gallery (Jessica Thompson)
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Buildings That Spin
p|m Gallery August 2006 residency
August 3 - 26, 2006
Including work by Kim Adams, Dieter Janssen, Robert Osbourne, Sara Graham, Christopher Allen, and Grace M. Chan, this show plumbed the light and dark sides of architectural progress, and some things in-between.
Click here to read the Globe & Mail review by Gary Michael Dault.
Click here to read the Toronto Star review by Peter Goddard.
Click here to read the Now Magazine review by David Jager.
No More Corner Offices
By Malka Greene
Between the world and our own idea of the world is a fascinating kink.
Architecture, we imagine, is permanent. And so our buildings thwart
us. Because they discount time, they misuse time. - Stuart Brand (1)
Do you recall the feeling of awe that strikes when you see something thoroughly wonderful or mind bogglingly old? I clearly remember that feeling when learning about the pyramids of ancient Egypt and visiting intricately carved Hellenistic period caves in Israel. It made my mind reel to consider that all those ages past, people could craft such wondrous things that had so clearly stood the test of time.
Now, bearing in mind how inspired were the minds that built up the past, one wonders perhaps how little we have grown. From whence came the concrete box; the great Toronto idea that one should tear things down rather than renovate; or even that our great technology should be focused on simply building taller things with better heating? And the coveted corner office...
A Dilbertian treasure, the corner office is the ultimate status symbol: a room with a view. While everyone else must look at corkboard, plaster walls, or maybe a fire escape, some superior being is allowed a scenic expanse to soothe. In New York, a view of Central Park is highly coveted, and I recall feeling a physical envy of someone’s posh view of Lake Michigan from a condo in Lincoln Park in Chicago, with a curtain wall of glass.
What would happen, however, if the view was equally distributed? A condominium called Suite Villard (2) in Curitiba, Brazil, was constructed so that each of its eleven floors rotate at a speed and direction selected by the occupant: one can just imagine the fights over that remote control!
The potential for motion sickness aside, this rather novel creation triggered many questions: What if everyone could have a view? Why do buildings have to remain in one place, and do they in fact remain static? Is architecture an art or a craft, and can it be both (3)?
Most of us consider buildings to be motionless, even though the word ‘build’ is a verb. Ironically, ‘build’ comes from the Old English word byldan, which evolved from the word timbran, also the root of the word ‘timber.’ This makes the root for a word of construction the same as what common usage describes as both a material - wood - and a warning call that a tree is falling. The same root describing construction and destruction, Buildings That Spin takes the idea of movement in architecture in two distinct directions: the metaphor and the literal.
Kim Adams, in his works The Fishing Unit and The Carving Unit, illustrates that creativity should direct our fancy; that a full-service vacation home and fishing hole combo unit can fold up on a truck, and that sleeper units from transport trucks can serve as luxury accommodations. In Africville: Place of Memory, architect Robert Osbourne teaches us that memory can be revived through the careful consideration of location and place, and that letting the environment into our space can spark spiritual connections. Dieter Janssen re-configures the conventional notion of a ‘curtain wall’ by imagining reconfigurable interior walls made from curtains that run on tracks, in the organic and almost ephemeral Iceland House.
Sara Graham, inspired by Archigram, meticulously blurs traditional architectural methods with the creativity and questioning of fiction, to create impossibility that is lit by possibility in Bromley’s Bluff. In Death of a Monolith, Christopher Allen reminds us that there is a darker side to all this progress, and that we should consider the future of our plans: that all buildings age and our power controls the grace of it. Grace M. Chan empowers viewers to change their own perception of space and time using their own body as a tool in How To Make Your Own Building Spin in 8 Easy Steps.
This exhibition is the beginning stage of research exploring architecture, design, urban development, and innovation. Each of the artists included in this exhibition is concerned with a particular angle of the Building, and the metaphor inferred by the title, over the literal.
1. Brand, Stuart. How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built. London, UK: Penguin, 1995.
2. Jatras, Todd. “Apartment Go-Round.” Wired. July 2005: 40.
3. I believe strongly that architecture can, and should be, both art and craft.
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