Madelon Vriesendorp’s ‘sculptural interventions and playful ideas’ at The Cosmic House
A Madelon Vriesendorp exhibition opens at The Cosmic House in London, surprising and delighting visitors with its ‘sculptural interventions and playful ideas‘
As you look from the street into the window of The Cosmic House in west London, a motionless dog stares back. Inside, a giant foot stops a door shutting. An eye stares back from an open drawer. An egg has transmogrified into a drowning Ted Cruz. A tongue sticks out of another eye. Two hands protrude from the wall, pointing at a series of illuminated caricatures sitting atop a bookshelf opposite. Things are not what they seem in The Cosmic House. Bulging with beguiling sculptural interventions and playful ideas from Dutch artist Madelon Vriesendorp for her exhibition ‘Cosmic Housework’, it is an exploratory laboratory of uncanny discovery.
Madelon Vriesendorp at The Cosmic House
The drawings, sculptures, and fascinating collection of found objects that Vriesendorp has secreted within the home built by Charles and Maggie Jencks – already an idiosyncratic and extraordinary property – offer a rich interplay with the existing interiors and collection. As a domestic space, Cosmic House was a built exploration of the postmodernist theory, garden design, and linguistic ideas the Jencks developed over their distinguished careers. Since 2021, it has been reimagined as a space of playful and critical experiment and research into the rich cosmos of ideas the Jencks and their celebrated coterie of friends conjured in the building.
Vriesendorp was part of that coterie. A co-founder of OMA, alongside then-husband Rem Koolhaas, her aesthetic and illustrative skills formed the imagery and visual language of the architectural practice. At one dinner, Jencks passed around a plasticine model of his design for his Parco Portello garden in Milan. 'Its curve was wrong, it was horrible,' Vriesendorp recalls, explaining how she cut straight into the model to improve it. He invited her back the next day to work with him on the garden schemes; her models and rich illustrations are on display in one of the two curated presentations of her work in the house.
The other is in what was once Maggie’s study, now crammed with a joyous display of the Vriesendorp’s sketches, models, and games. But these two curated spaces only make up a small part of the vast collection of works spread across the house, buried into nooks and presented in unexpected places to riff off the Jenckses’ collection.
Many pieces utilise discarded materials, reimagining them into new life. Plastics Surgery is a lockdown project of repurposing plastic milk containers into bizarre and beautiful characters, including those above the bookshelf, such as an enormous dragon, and, in the Jenckses’ jacuzzi, a family of plastic swans. A turquoise limbless and headless body looks out from the Jenckses’ bedroom, wearing nothing other than a necklace made from printer cartridges.
Materials transform, but so do words. There is an evident affinity and love of words, punnery, and metaphor in the works of both Charles Jencks and Vriesendorp. Sometimes this is obliquely nuanced, other times more obvious, as with the 'handelier' hanging above the main staircase, a light fitting formed of card hands pointing downwards.
In the library, two large sculptural characters sit aside a chessboard – but instead of the pieces, they are battling over three books written by Jencks, including The Story of Post-Mondernism, adorned with Vriesendorp’s cover design. One wonders if the two chess players are Jencks and Vriesendorp themselves.
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
Elsewhere, a series of sketches of 20th-century buildings as cartoon situations, some of which were included in Jencks’ books, are presented. Frank Gehry’s designs transposed as Marilyn Monroe’s dress, a mermaid, and a handkerchief speak to the joy of their collaborations. 'He was talking, and I was drawing, he read something and I drew something else,' the artist says of their process, evidently full of as much joy as intellect. 'We inspired each other, and we laughed so much.'
‘Cosmic Housework’ runs until 31 May 2024, jencksfoundation.org
Will Jennings is a writer, educator and artist based in London and is a regular contributor to Wallpaper*. Will is interested in how arts and architectures intersect and is editor of online arts and architecture writing platform recessed.space and director of the charity Hypha Studios, as well as a member of the Association of International Art Critics.
-
‘Hedonistic and avant-garde’: Rabanne’s Julian Dossena on the legacy of the chainmail 1969 bag
Paco Rabanne’s 1969 chainmail handbag encapsulates the late designer’s futuristic, space-age style. Current creative director Julien Dossena tells Wallpaper* about the bag’s particular pleasures
By Jack Moss Published
-
Postcard from Paris: Olympic fever takes over the streets
On the eve of the opening ceremony of Paris 2024, our correspondent shares her views from the streets of the capital about how the event is impacting the urban landscape.
By Minako Norimatsu Published
-
The Mercury Prize nominees for 2024 have been revealed
Charli XCX, The Last Dinner Party and Beth Gibbons are amongst this year's nominees
By Charlotte Gunn Published
-
‘Mental health, motherhood and class’: Hannah Perry’s dynamic installation at Baltic
Hannah Perry's exhibition ’Manual Labour’ is on show at Baltic in Gateshead, UK, a five-part installation drawing parallels between motherhood and factory work
By Emily Steer Published
-
Francis Alÿs plots child play around the world at the Barbican
In Francis Alÿs' exhibition ‘Ricochets’ at London’s Barbican, the artist explores the universality of play, even in challenging situations
By Amah-Rose Abrams Published
-
At Glastonbury’s Shangri-La, activism and innovation meet
Glastonbury’s south-east corner is known for its after-dark entertainment but by day, there is a different story to tell
By Rhian Daly Published
-
‘I am almost an anti-sculptor’: Dominique White on her Whitechapel Max Mara Art Prize show
The artist mines the ocean to explore Afrofuturism in ‘Deadweight’, opening at London’s Whitechapel and detailed in a new film
By Amah-Rose Abrams Published
-
Remembering Rusty Egan's Blitz Club: a place to 'avoid the mob and the homophobes', where the New Romantics were born
As he releases new vinyl boxset, 'Blitzed!', Wallpaper* meets DJ Rusty Egan to talk about London's scene-building Blitz club – the antidote to the late 70s punk scene and a hot-bed of experimental fashion
By Craig McLean Published
-
Suzannah Pettigrew's 'tender and ghostly' new show at Surrealist photographer Lee Miller's former home in East Sussex
London-based artist Suzannah Pettigrew's photographic stills create a snapshot of her Sussex coast childhood, conjuring up a hallucinatory world of memory
By Mary Cleary Published
-
The body, pleasure and play: Beryl Cook and Tom of Finland united in London
Tom of Finland’s homoeroticism meets Beryl Cook’s female-oriented camp as Studio Voltaire unites work by the two artists in a London exhibition
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Zanele Muholi celebrates South Africa’s Black LGBTI communities in LA and London
Zanele Muholi's portraits and sculptures are currently on show at Southern Guild Los Angeles and the Tate Modern, London
By Hannah Silver Published