Art, architecture unite in captivating exhibition: «Architecture in the Expanded Field»


John King

The California College of the Arts in San Francisco presents a mazelike exhibition of the work of 60 artists and architects through April 7.  www.sfgate.com
The California College of the Arts in San Francisco presents a mazelike exhibition of the work of 60 artists and architects through April 7. http://www.sfgate.com

If you’ve ever imagined plunging into a Mobius strip, I have just the exhibition for you: «Architecture in the Expanded Field,» at the San Francisco campus of the California College of the Arts.

It’s a mazelike immersion where Richard Serra‘s rusted steel «Sequence» unwinds beneath the fog-shrouded Blur Building of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, an arm’s length away from Andy Goldsworthy‘s «Faultline.» Sixty architects and artists are represented in all, and an equal number of creative provocations.

What’s on display isn’t the physical work itself, but diagrams, studies and images transferred to sequences of frosted acrylic panels. Each rectangular panel is connected by hinges to the panels alongside, above and below it. The interconnected panels – think flattened chains in taut rows – are then hung from the ceiling by thin steel cables.

The various strands all start at the exhibition’s outer four edges and twist and snap toward a central core, leaving just enough space for passageways from each side that visitors can follow. Plunging in, we encounter work by such emerging locals as Iwamoto Scott and Future Cities Lab as well as Big Names such as Serra and Goldsworthy.

This is the latest installment of the «Way Beyond Art» series at the college’s Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. It was co-curated by Ila Berman, director of the architecture program, and architect Douglas Burnham. Their goal: to convey what the wall text calls «a new and expanding network of relations between the domains of architecture, sculpture, interiors and landscape.»

vía Art, architecture unite in captivating exhibition.

The Way Beyond Art: Architecture in the Expanded Field  www.dexigner.com
The Way Beyond Art: Architecture in the Expanded Field http://www.dexigner.com

The Way Beyond Art: Architecture in the Expanded Field

The CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts presents the exhibition The Way Beyond Art: Architecture in the Expanded Field through April 7, 2012, in the Upper Logan Galleries of California College of the Arts.

Architecture in the Expanded Field is designed and curated by Ila Berman, CCA director of Architecture, and Douglas Burnham, CCA adjunct professor and principal of envelope a+d. It explores the realm of installation art and architecture across a broad terrain of practices, ranging from the immersive environments of Ryoji Ikeda, Tomas Saraceno, and Philippe Rahm to the deconstructions of Gordon Matta-Clark and the spatial distortions and tectonic manipulations of Softlab, Numen / For Use, Gramazio & Kohler, and theverymany. The exhibition has two components: an immersive full-scale installation (both within and outside the gallery) and a didactic «surface» component that presents the mapped expanded field of architectural installation.

THE WAY BEYOND ART

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