Permeable Bariers

Werner Feiersinger - Ohne Titel

Werner Feiersinger - Skulptur auf der Venetalm

Within his work Werner Feiersinger seems to question the presence of the body in Architecture and the role of architecture to provide for the body. These structures enclose space and seem to be either designed to keep something in or stop someone for getting in. But what or who? Should they be thought of as architectural constructions or sculptures? I have only ever seen images of the work so I don't know how they feel in reality. How large are the gaps? Do you feel able to walk into them? Are they forbidding or inviting? The work seems to call for engagement but also questions the role that the viewer plays out through their interaction.

Carmody Groarke

Carmody Groarke

This is a pavilion by Carmony Groake for Regents Place, London. It seeks to actively engage the passerby, offering routes through and seating areas within. It seems to be less cerebral than the Feiersinger works asking the viewer to experience the feeling of moving through a space where your peripheral vision is constantly stimulated. It is lit from within during the night, making it seem very much permeable and inhabitable.  During the day the polished steel tubes reflect light making the structure feel much more solid and inpenetrable. How does architecture claim space? How does it feel to move through it or past it? At what point does something stop being a wall and begin to invite you in?

Werner Feiersinger : http://www.martinjanda.at/kuenstler_5_feiersinger.html

Carmody Groake : http://www.carmodygroarke.com/projects/publicspace/060.html

Coloured shadows in the work of Liam Gillick and Daniel Buren

Liam Gillick in MAK museum Vienna

Liam Gillick has been uses perspex frequently. He creates some interesting slatted structures which interweave panels of perspex, wood or gaps. Reflecting the body of the viewer in parts, allowing it through in others,  I guess it speaks of the use of mirrors in a specific era of art making when artists began to consider the area around their art work. Industrial colour and form also take us back there. They act as partial barriers and containers of space, blocking our route but also suggesting another. Light is allowed to pass through and is also reflected, air is enclosed. People sense the possibility of sliding through a gap but somehow they never seem quite wide enough. Coloured shadows are cast hitting surfaces as sharp definite shades.

 

Daniel Buren at Mudam

I was interested to see this work by Daniel Buren for Mudam in Belgium also using Perspex, referencing the architecture of Leoh Ming Pei and as always speaking of frames - aesthetic, arhchitectural and institutional. I've been interested in Buren's work ever since seeing images of his famous New York piece where the striped flags continue through the gallery and out into the street, hung like washing from a line. They looked to me almost like the infinite reflections that occur when you place two mirrors opposite each other, somehow this perspex continues this thread. 

There seems to be a very strong connection between these artists in how they use this material. Both are concerned with the frame of the institution, the lineage they are making work in and the way the body fits to architecture

Daniel Buren - http://www.mudam.lu/en/expositions/details/exposition/daniel-buren/
Liam Gillick - http://www.caseykaplangallery.com/artists/liam_gillick/01.html

Hello all.
I have started this blog as a way of trying to record some of the things I am looking at and thinking about. Expect lots of things to do with art, design, architecture, space and materials. I'm not really expecting anyone to look at it but you never know. So here we go!