Space Un embodies the French-Cameroonian roots of its creator, collector Edna Dumas; her experience as a contemporary African art collector; and her insights from living long-term in Japan. The newly launched creative hub in the heart of Tokyo was co-founded by actor and artist Yuta Nakano and entrepreneur Lothar Eckstein, and it was designed by architect Go Hasegawa. 

Dumas explains: 'It's a space to bring people together. “Un” means one in French, but also explores themes of unity.' Inaugurated with work by Senegalese artist Aliou Diack, Space Un juxtaposes Senegalese artworks with Japanese material contexts, facilitating conversations on the intercontinental, cultural exchange between Africa and Asia.

Space Un: Tokyo art scene’s newcomer dedicated to contemporary African art 

Space Un is located in Tokyo's Aoyama, between the cultural and commercial hubs of Roppongi and Shibuya. Strategically positioned in this bustling area, Space Un aims to attract as many potential collectors, art enthusiasts and new audiences as possible. 

Dumas says: 'Contemporary African art is sadly under-represented in this part of the world.' Through Space Un’s wider programming, she aims to challenge preconceptions and stereotypes of contemporary African art in Japan and beyond.

The project's architect was keen for his design to address Space Un as a fundamental space for communication, beyond the stereotypical image of an art gallery. To that effect, the venue’s wide, street-side glass window is lined with an L-shaped bench that encourages visitors to stay, enjoy the café and continue to engage with the space. 

'We made the bench with Japanese cypress from Yoshino, a very precious, premium wood, often used for important shrines in Japan,' Hasegawa continues. He paired it with sourced tables from Cameroon, Togo and Nigeria: 'It's a meeting between the Japanese bench and the West African table.'

Inside, Hasegawa designed a bespoke frame structure for the ceiling, to conceal pre-existing steel beams. There were two more reasons behind this gesture. The first was to create a space for storing equipment for future shows, and the second was his intention to celebrate the shoji; the room partition devices used in traditional Japanese architecture, typically made of paper and lattice frames of cypress wood. 

The gallery's design extends outside, to the landscaping of a small garden, which features indigenous African plants. Hasegawa flags that it already stops passersby in their tracks: 'Even for the people who do not enter, the garden acts as a second gallery for this space.'

'Art for me is this universal language,’ says Dumas. ‘You can be Japanese, or Senegalese, but when you are in front of art, sculpture, or performance, it speaks to you. This is what I want the audience to feel like when they come to that space. To say, ”I understand, I feel at home”,’ says Dumas. 

Launched alongside the physical gallery, the Space Un Residency Program invites contemporary African artists to visit Japan and produce work from Hasegawa’s Yoshino Cedar House, originally constructed in 2017 as part of Airbnb’s House Visions project. Artist Aliou Diack has already spent a month there producing work for the current exhibition at Space Un. Hasegawa explains that 'there is already a lot of communication between the African artists and Yoshino rural people - they made the frames for Diack’s artworks'.

Dumas says: 'I would love the Japanese audience to be taken by contemporary African art – to have the experience of seeing something other than what they have been accustomed to [...] I think the space will bring something new thematically and hopefully, they will embrace diversity and find something in common.'

spaceun.tokyo

ghaa.co.jp

When we first visited the new Stephen Friedman gallery on Cork Street, in London’s Mayfair, we knew we were unlikely to encounter the 'white box' often associated with the art world. When the acclaimed gallerist had decided to relocate his business to the new address (moving from nearby Old Burlington Street), he had called upon David Kohn. The award-winning London architect is known for his considered and characterful takes that often play with colour and shape, as seen in projects such as the Red House, which won RIBA House of the Year 2022.  

Step inside the Stephen Friedman Gallery by David Kohn

The new Stephen Friedman Gallery is generous, including ample exhibition space with a street-facing, glass-glazed frontage; expansive, bespoke-designed offices for the business's staff; and a bonus rear garden, which is perfect for events and art activations, offering a flexible, mini urban sculpture park in the heart of London.

'I wanted to rethink the gallery,' Kohn says, explaining that he was keen to create a flowing, unified space – front and back – and windows to get daylight in, for the displays, yes, but also for the staff working there daily. 'And the outside space here is for all [visitors and staff]. There’s a kiosk, a terrace, and it’s very much used by everyone.' 

Inside, it's all about material surfaces and details, with bespoke timber joinery elevating the interior throughout. Kohn stresses it was important for him to introduce a design that speaks to the human scale – that feels warm and comfortable but also refined. 

It is a combination that resonates with the gallerist too. 'I love the mix of design and art, it’s the way I like to live. It creates a very comfortable environment,' Stephen Friedman says.

The circulation spaces connecting everything were pivotal in the openness of this design – from the softly curved staircase in the gallery to the beautifully sculptural workspace at the rear, and the bright blue terrace steps that lead to a little balcony, its outline playfully, abstractly shaped like an elephant. 

'The flow is great,’ says Kohn. 'The joinery has a coherent, curved language. There’s a feeling and an encouragement to move between spaces and take the journey through the gallery.'

Friedman says: 'Our ambition, along with [property owner] The Pollen Estate and David Kohn, is for the gallery to become a leading space both creatively and functionally. Cork Street’s history and its revival as an arts destination is a testament to London as a vital part of the global art world. We are incredibly proud to work with such exceptional artists and want to support them in the best ways we can. By undertaking such a significant development, we are creating a major pathway towards future growth.'

davidkohn.co.uk

Maebashi Galleria is the latest in the string of revitalisation projects involving an impressive roll call of top international and Japanese architecture, design and art scene names, that are putting Maebashi in mountainous Gunma prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, firmly on the country's creative map. With this newest opening – a new complex fusing art galleries with residences – the transformation of a sleepy former silk-making city in rural Japan into a major creative hub has taken a leap forward.

Maebashi Galleria by Akihisa Hirata

Innovation has long been threaded through the DNA of the small city, which flourished for centuries as a progressive silk production hub. More recently, countering its industrial decline, its creative projects are increasingly in the spotlight, including the landmark Shiroiya Hotel by Sou Fujimoto which opened in December 2020.

Maebashi Galleria, just five minutes on foot from the hotel, was designed by architect Akihisa Hirata. Transparent and light, the four-storey building – configured from 13 staggered layers of stacked box-like units wrapped in greenery, that seemingly hover above the ground – is home to two gallery spaces, 26 residences and the French restaurant Cépages.

A key feature is the plaza, its community heartbeat, around which the steel-frame building appears to float and overhang, as Hirata explains: ‘The brief for this project was to create a plaza and a group of residences, which would serve as one of the hubs for the city.’

‘We therefore came up with the idea of wrapping the apartments with planting, so they look like a tree crown, and float them in the sky. The space underneath the tree crown is used as the plaza, occupied by various people, accommodating a number of different activities.’

Highlighting the fragmented structural form, he adds: ‘The apartment units are following the grid of the existing townscape and by varying the height of each unit, the roof became a large garden to the adjacent unit. The structural grid, which is made of simple steel frames, gradually changes as it gets higher.’

Art is centre stage at the complex, which now houses some of Japan’s most respected independent galleries. Gallery 1 is home to Taka Ishii Gallery, while in Gallery 2, four leading galleries plan to rotate exhibitions, including Tomio Koyama Gallery, Shiobara Art Office, Maki Gallery and rin art association.

The project forms part of a wider revitalisation plan to transform Maebashi into a green, modern design city, according to Kaoru Hashimoto, a local architect and president of Machino-Kaihatsu-Sha, the development company behind the project.

‘The concept of Maebashi Galleria is to nurture a place where people find something new in life, cultivate creativity and become the gathering point of Maebashi lovers,’ explains Hashimoto, who is working closely with the influential local entrepreneur Hitoshi Tanaka, owner of Shiroiya Hotel, on a string of city projects.

‘The inspiration lies in the creation of a living space with art. It will become a place where individuals gather, communicate and live,’ he adds. 

Projects already open in Maebashi include a confectionary store by Schemata’s Jo Nagasaka; Fumiko Takahama’s seafood restaurant; a bakery at Shiroiya by Teruhiro Yanagihara Studio; and a Blue Bottle Coffee Shiroiya Café by Keiji Ashizawa Design.

And the momentum of Maebashi’s creative renaissance is showing no sign of slowing down: respected curator Fumio Nanjo recently became honorary director at museum Arts Maebashi; Jasper Morrison is planning to unveil designs for a public toilet; and Suppose Design Office is also working on a new commercial complex, among other projects.

hao.nu 
towndevelop.jp 

Marseille’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) has just received a facelift. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the institution – located in the affluent southern neighbourhood of Bonneveine – underwent a four-year refurbishment. As a result, it now boasts a brand-new reception hall, a rooftop terrace and a new exhibition space. 

The reinvented museum – whose new artistic director Stéphanie Airaud is due to stem in this summer – opened with a bang last night with a temporary exhibition by Italian artist Paola Pivi and a rehang of its impressive collection featuring works by Louise Bourgeois, Zineb Sedira and Niki de Saint Phalle. But the celebration was tainted by ongoing social turmoil linked to President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform.

Designed in the late 1970s by the German physician Gustav Rau with views to house his private collection, MAC’s building was subsequently donated to the City of Marseille which opened its doors to the public in 1994 before obtaining museum status in 2003. Its modernist building is characterised by an imposing saw-tooth roof which graces its 2,500 sqm of marble-floored exhibition space with abundant sunlight. 

Now, thanks to a €5 million refurbishing project spearheaded by local architecture firm Bureau Architecture Méditerranée (BAM), the museum boasts an uncluttered entrance hall open to the street and over 300 sq m of additional exhibition space dedicated to experimental projects. Outside, a ramp now also links the entrance courtyard to the Bonneveine garden at the rear of the building and to a brand-new rooftop terrace with an aluminium bar and panoramic views of the surrounding eight arrondissements.

Inside, a newly-conceived hang gives an overview of the museum’s impressive collection which features some 600 works spanning twentieth-century movements such as Art Povera, Nouveau Réalisme, Fluxus and Supports-Surfaces. Inspired by Italian critic and artist Germano Celant’s seminal essay ‘1968: Towards a Global diversity’, the new display titled 'PARADE' features 130 works divided into six sections exploring such themes as materiality, subjectivity and fiction. 

Some masterpieces would certainly earn the envy of other museums. Among them, Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco’s iconic 1993 sculpture La DS – a modified Citroën DS conceived to fit only one body; Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1985 painting The King of Zulus – an homage to Louis Armstrong made of acrylic, oil pastels and glued photocopies on canvas, purchased by MAC in 1986 for the modest sum of 30,000 French francs (approximately 8,500 € today); and French artist Annette Messager’s 1984 Couteau Baiser – an enlarged photograph of a passionate kiss retouched with bright monochromatic acrylic colours and mounted on canvas. 

Alongside this, a temporary exhibition by Paola Pivi titled ‘It’s not my job, it’s your job’ features her ever-so Instagrammable multi-coloured feathered bears, among other large-size interactive works. 

For Marseille – France’s third largest city historically burdened by high rates of criminality and unemployment – MAC’s reopening is a symbol of its recently-elected socialist mayor Benoît Payan’s culturally-progressive international vision, one which contrasts with his centre-right clientelist predecessor of 25 years Jean-Claude Gaudin. But on the evening of the launch, the city’s enthusiasm was overshadowed by the stark reality of nationwide social turmoil over pension reforms when a group of some 40 protestors stormed the podium chanting ‘Macron démission!’ (‘Macron resign!’) and brandishing banners reading ‘No to the privatisation of the art world!’ The intervention served as a harsh reminder that a revitalised museum alone can’t save Marseille from its complex urban ills. 

Paola Pivi, 'It’s not my job, it’s your job', 6 August 2023, MAC, Musée d’art contemporain, 69, avenue d’Haïfa, 13008 Marseille. macm.org

Bosco Sodi is a busy man. In the last two months, he has opened a new studio and exhibition space in Mexico City (his third worldwide), unveiled his fourth solo show at Galería Hilario Galguera in the Mexican capital, opened other solo exhibitions in Madrid’s Fundación Casa de México en España and the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is in the process of building a new studio in Greece and working towards a major show at China's He Art Museum in November 2024. We also recently showcased Casa Primitiva, a new space by architects Hanghar on the wine estate Sodi owns with his brother Claudio, just outside Madrid.

But Sodi, who, when I call him at 8 am, tells me he has already been up for hours in his home in New York, clearly thrives on spinning numerous plates. Even his new studio space in the Atlampa neighbourhood of Mexico City is a feat in multitasking. Sodi wanted to prepare for an eventuality where he might have to move back to Mexico to look after his parents while ensuring he also had somewhere to work. But in typical Sodi style, Studio CMDX rapidly became much more than just a studio. 

With the help of his friend, architect and long-term collaborator Alberto Kalach (a 2022 Wallpaper* Design Awards winner for Hotel Terrestre in Puerto Escondido), the two have created a vast exhibition space housing an art gallery, artist residency, kitchen and terrace as well as Sodi’s personal workspace. The building was originally an old warehouse in the industrial Atlampa colony that was demolished to make two separate structures. As with Sodi’s previous forays into the world of architecture, the resulting space is almost monastic in its simplicity, a love letter to humble materials like red brick, concrete and wood with huge windows that bathe the rooms in warm Mexican light. 

‘We wanted a space where the art wasn’t competing with the architecture,’ Sodi explains, ‘something with simple materials; we love wood, we love plants, we love concrete and bricks.’ The terrace and exhibition space are filled with Sodi’s own work that until recently had been languishing in storage. Newly dusted off, the pieces dotted around the space create a sort of interactive map of Sodi’s CV over the last two decades. His signature paintings made from layering pigment, sawdust, water and glue adorn the walls and more recent golden clay sculptures are scattered around, creating pops of shiny opulence against muted grey breezeblocks.    

Since its opening in early February 2023, more than 2,000 visitors have already visited the Mexico City studio, something that surprises Sodi. ‘We never thought we would have so many visitors. In the first month of February, we opened it every day, but because of the number of people we’ve had to cut it down,’ he marvels. Perhaps it isn’t that surprising but rather the exact manifestation of Sodi’s mantra that art has the power to bring communities together unlike anything else.

For Sodi, who was born in Mexico City in 1970, it was important to create a democratic artistic space and gallery in his hometown, particularly in a less affluent part of the metropolis: ‘I believe in the power of art to change places, it can completely change the tone of a place and inspire people to reconnect with themselves.’ This is something Sodi has witnessed first-hand at Casa Wabi, his first large-scale studio project that he designed with Japanese architect Tadao Ando in 2014 on Oaxaca’s wild Pacific coastline. In the eight years since it opened, Casa Wabi has attracted a thriving community of creatives and fostered a new generation of local youths with access to and an interest in art.  

The healing effect of creativity in childhood is something Sodi understands intimately. As a child, he was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia and was encouraged by his mother to try art classes to help calm his mind. This, it turned out, was the medicine he had needed all along. Inspired by art’s healing balm for his own life and perhaps a strong sense of social conscience impressed upon him by his mother, a Marxist philosopher, Sodi has always felt compelled to share his good fortune. ‘I think when you are a successful artist you have the responsibility to give back. I am a very lucky guy; I am able to do what I love the most and it's a necessity for me, it’s like therapy. When I think where to give back I first think about my country and then also my fellow colleagues, the artists of this world.’

Sodi has lived and worked in many different places, from New York to Berlin, Barcelona to Mexico, but no matter where he is in the world two things remain constant in his work: creating and nature. His use of crude natural materials like volcanic ash, resin and clay is more than just an aesthetic penchant, they are a way of communing with and honouring the natural world. 

‘Art and nature help us to better understand the universe’ he says. ‘If you understand the universe you understand yourself and other human beings.’ The new studio in Mexico City allows communities to take a break from the chaos outside and take a moment to observe the beauty of simple natural materials and thereby reconnect with the stillness in ourselves. ‘Right now we are at a crunch point', Sodi warns. ‘If we don’t learn to connect with ourselves and what nature is, it will be a disaster.’

To make an appointment to visit Studio CDMX visit boscosodi.com/studio-cdmx.

‘Bosco Sodi: Origen’, until 9 June 2023, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts. https://harvardartmuseums.org/exhibitions/6298/bosco-sodi-origen

Alabanzas, until 7 April, Galeria Hilario Galguera, Mexico City https://www.galeriahilariogalguera.com/exhibitions/alabanzas

Founded by New York-born artist-photographer Roger Ballen, the Inside Out Centre for the Arts is set to become a significant landmark on bustling Jan Smuts Avenue in leafy Johannesburg (or Jozi as locals call it). Its mission is simple: exhibit, educate and promote art related to the African continent.

A project years in the making, and a boon for Jozi’s Forest Town neighbourhood, Inside Out Centre for the Arts is specifically settled near the historical Constitutional Hill and the energetic creative suburb of Rosebank. Together with the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Museum and the Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation, it forms part of a trinity of cultural and educational centres right in the hub of the city. 

The inaugural show, titled ‘End of the Game,’ will run for a minimum of one year. It grapples with the decimation of wildlife in Africa, specifically starting in the mid-1800s, through both a historical and artistic lens. Roger Ballen uses his work to delve deeper into the psychological relationship humans have with the natural world. In most cases, this relationship is ‘adversarial, exploitative and destructive, and is reflective of a dystopian world in ecological crisis’, says Ballen. 

And the show reveals exactly that. The introspective exhibition encompasses a cumulation of artefacts, paintings, drawings, film clips and documentary photographs. ‘This exhibition encourages vital discussions about our treatment of animals, wildlife management, responsible tourism and environmental stewardship in our current world,’ says Ballen, explaining that the show ‘attempts to record and highlight the historical significance and context of the “Golden Age’’ of African hunting expeditions by colonialists and powerful Western figureheads – such as Winston Churchill, FD Roosevelt, King Edward VIII and Ernest Hemingway.’

‘A central challenge in my career has been to locate the animal in the human being and the human being in the animal,’ says Ballen. ‘The rooms that I photograph represent the conflictual relationship between civilisation and nature, where opposites attract and break apart in a world built not on logic, but on irrationality. Delirium, mirage, dreams and nightmares coexist and cannot be categorized as light or dark.

‘Animals pervade my spaces: cats, dogs, rats, chickens, snakes and more. Dead and alive, big and small, wild and tame. Wherever you look, there are animals,’ he continues. ‘They appear in places that hardly belong. You cannot escape the animal. You cannot run away from the animal. The animal is deep inside. We come from the animal.’

The Inside Out Centre for the Arts was founded as a not-for-profit in 2008 – the new space is the physical manifestation of the foundation. The brutalist-inspired design of the building itself is based on the introspective idea of inside out. ‘I sometimes think that the building looks like it has been turned “inside out”,’ says Ballen, who worked closely with local architect Joe van Rooyen of JVR Architects to create this landmark building. Their vision was to give it both presence and personality – using raw concrete and plasterwork in both the interior and exterior surfaces that are seemingly intermingled. 

This approach functions as a way to create drama by concealing the entrance. Once through the threshold it is the main exhibition space that opens up into a double-volume naturally lit space with a dazzling suspended barrel. The offices on the other hand are off to the side in a theatrical cantilevered space. 

The centre will also facilitate a dynamic programme of educational talks, panel discussions, masterclasses and presentations that reflect on the current exhibition and on topics relevant to arts and culture. 

insideoutcentreforthearts.com

Perched atop the new National Museum in Norway is the Light Hall, an iridescent marble box enclosing an open, cavernous space. Used for various group and themed exhibitions, it will also become home to The Fredriksen Family Commissions, a series of five biennial projects in which international artists are invited to create a work or installation – Laure Prouvost is the first.

The whole place was a construction site when the Brussels-based French artist made her first site visit. ‘There were pipes coming out everywhere and I was like, could we let nature take over, stop building, and let birds come in?’ she says, recalling a kernel of an idea that developed over later visits. Flying north from Belgium, looking down upon the clouds, thinking about migration and a bird’s-eye vantage of earth, the artist began to conceive of the Light Hall as a man-made cloud levitating above Oslo, and set about creating an ethereal and experiential world within.

Upon ascending a staircase to the peak of the museum, a narrow passage with a rising and dropping floor acts as a threshold into Prouvost’s new realm. An enormous video wall divides the Light Hall in two, this first side is what the artist calls the valley – ‘the valley of humans, of production, consuming, and consumerism, but also belonging together with nature’. Snaking pipes entwine architecture and artifice, seemingly leaking oil across the terrazzo floor into pools trapping detritus of consumerism and nature. However, within this gloomy environment, there are hints of how we humans might float away from earthly despair and into the clouds.

An intricate tapestry hangs down, decorated with facts about migrating birds such as TERNS FLY 5700KM IN 7 DAYS WITHOUT ANY PAUSE and MOST BIRDS TRAVEL ALONE. Prouvost says it was woven by her ‘Grand Ma’ (a recurring character in her artwork) and cousins in Flanders, and that while it’s limply hanging now, ‘it's really to be carried out by a plane or a big bird to go up and fly off from the museum’. Another tapestry forms an enclosed, dark, cosy space in which the artist’s reassuring voiceover invites us to ‘stay forever if you want, lay down, feel free to nest’.

The looping film projected onto the dividing wall has a recurring and haunting song Prouvost wrote with Ghent musician Tsar B, sung by Singing Molenbeek, a children’s choir the artist has become involved with, whom she says ‘are from a deprived area of Belgium and all come from different migrating backgrounds’. Grand Ma – an ever-present in the installation – also features in the film, flying through the sky naked, grinning and weightless.

We are told by Prouvost that Grand Ma dangles on a rope from her husband’s plane every Sunday: ‘She gets naked, jumps, and feels the elements, the sky, connects with levitation, and becomes something else.’ Like this story, we are never quite sure what is real or fake in Prouvost’s creations, and her world is richer for it.

Architectural trompe l'oeil gives the impression of holes cut deep into the floor under raised bridges and eked behind the screen; voices from the pipes recall dreams of flotation; a rotating sculpture appears to levitate above a chunk of Norwegian rock; and upturned hanging wicker baskets reveal themselves to be VR headsets that offer an uncanny replication of the space, but with naked female sirens gently encouraging the viewer to join them in levitation and ascend to another realm.

A grotto-like tunnel leads from the valley, narrowing as it curves around the vast projection wall, squeezing the body before exuding it into that other realm. Here the space is a contrast, iridescent Nordic light penetrating the marble walls, and instead of oil slicks the floor is coated in wisping mists. This is a brighter, more optimistic world, to which Boschian glass birds – crafted in Murano by Berengo Studio – have also migrated, as have enormous rocks (both real ones from Norwegian valleys and fabricated simulacra) which float with empyrean weightlessness. In the film, Grand Ma is again joyously flying through the air, but this time viewers have joined her exuberant ascent.

A central soft mound of a pattern replicating the terrazzo floor invites us to dwell under twisting chandeliers of consumerist rubbish, as if it had been sucked into a vortex from the valley floor and even it, the worst of plastic waste, could transform into something of delicate beauty. Here there is time to recline, to sink into the cloud and slowly contemplate Prouvost’s delightful provocation to our earthly situations. She has created a landscape – and skyscape – of care and welcome, awash with maternal attention and dedication to craftswomanship – elements which she describes as introducing herstory into history.

Prouvost and her collaborators – human and nonhuman, and whether singing, crafting, or flying – have created a space of fewer frontiers, above the Anthropocene but a place from which to look down through the clouds and imagine a better way, with a lighter touch, more magic, and fewer hierarchies.

‘Laure Prouvost. Above Front Tears Oui Float’ runs until 12 February 2023 at the National Museum of Norway. nasjonalmuseet.no

In a unification of art and architecture, the 2022 NGV Architecture Commission at the National Gallery of Victoria sees a colourful rendition of the iconic Greek structure, The Parthenon. Temple of Boom is designed by Melbourne-based architects Adam Newman and Kelvin Tsang and meditates on the effects of time as, over the coming months, three artists will contribute to an evolution of the form’s design.

The visual artists for the 2022 NGV Architecture Commission will comprise a multidisciplinary creative, a muralist, and a painter. David Lee Pereira delves into discussions on gender and identity through surrealist floral motifs; Drez plays with perspective through mind-bending expanses of colour; and illustrator and muralist Manda Lane intersperses depictions of nature into the man-made to consider expression and personal growth. The selected creatives have already adorned the structure and will add to its design in three phases, in a demonstration that reflects on our role in affecting change over time. 

Temple of Boom: 2022 NGV Architecture Commission

The structure takes on a size two-thirds of its muse and, as well as a starting point for discussion, it is imagined as a space for community gatherings and cultural performances throughout the Australian summer. The events will include a VR experience to transport us to The Parthenon, live DJ performances, and celebrations of classical architecture. The project invites us to consider ‘how we create and imbue architecture with meaning, as well as how this meaning can shift across time periods and cultures’, comments Tony Ellwood, director of the NGV. 

The design selection was made after five creative teams were shortlisted for the commission, comprising Yang Yang Lee and Louise Allen; Bryan Chung and Patrick Byrne; Antarctica Architects; Austin Maynard Architects; and the winning team, Adam Newman and Kelvin Tsang. 

Temple of Boom will be on display in the Grollo Equiset Garden of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Australia until October 2023. ngv.vic.gov.au

Somewhat unexpectedly on West Hollywood’s Melrose Avenue, with its gaudy colours and billboards, gallerist Rosa Park has cleverly created a sanctuary that instantly soothes the senses. Expanding from Francis Gallery’s first location in Bath, UK, Park’s second space has recently finished its year-long renovation.

Francis Gallery Los Angeles: the art of gallery design

Working in partnership with Lindsey Chan and Jerome Byron of LA-based studio BC, Park has created the antithesis of a stark white cube, instead exploring her talent for developing restrained environments that are harmonious with the works she shows. ‘I wanted to add softness and curves to what is otherwise a very clean, hard-edged space,’ she says. Unlike Francis Gallery in Bath, a Georgian townhouse, the Los Angeles gallery comprises a concrete shopfront. ‘LA is the kind of place where you can make anything that you want it to be, right?’ she jokes. She did so by referencing shapes and forms synonymous with Korean culture, such as the curved partition wall constructed at the centre of the gallery that emulates the form of a Korean moon jar, when viewed from a bird’s eye perspective.

Park worked only with natural materials, in a colour palette she calls ‘nuanced neutrals’, inspired by Korean and Californian hues, adding warmth and texture. Walls are painted with Portola’s Lime Wash in an off-white (nothing is optic white or black) and natural linen blinds diffuse the light (intentionally blocking out the busy street outside). She chose the smoked oak flooring from Madera and used only antique brass hardware for the same reason: ‘It will age beautifully over time.’ She adds, ‘Even though the gallery has just opened, I wanted the space to feel as though it’s been around for a while, for it to already be imbued with a sense of time.’

She commissioned artist Minjae Kim (who held a solo show at LA's Marta Gallery in 2021 and showed at Matter Projects during New York Design Week 2022) to create a round table and bench set for the back area of the gallery, while the long benches for the interior and courtyard were custom-made in-house, alongside upholstered cushions for a rare two-piece antique Korean summer bed, used separately as two low stools.

Outside in the courtyard at the rear of the gallery, Park points out the elements that are redolent of a traditional Korean hanok courtyard: ‘The low bench seating; the stone-like concrete steps; the single tree – in our case, a maple planted in the middle.’

All the consideration paid to the surroundings speaks directly to the consideration Park pays to her artists, who are on view within the gallery.

The inaugural show: ‘Morning Calm’

Titled 'Morning Calm', the gallery’s inaugural Los Angeles art exhibition includes mostly unseen works by six contemporary artists, both Korean and of Korean-American descent, at various stages of their careers, working in multiple mediums, and living in Los Angeles and Seoul.

John Zabawa is a Korean American artist specialising in portraits imbued with a sense of nostalgia. Park first showed his work in Bath in 2020, and for this show, he painted a rare self-portrait. 

This is the first time young painter Song Jaeho has shown work outside of Korea. ‘I love the lightness, wit and humour to how he paints,’ says Park of his abstract oils.

Rising star Bo Kim works more traditionally, carrying on the ‘Dansaekhwa’ movement focused on monochromatic simplicity. Using layers of acrylic and sand, her works address decay and physical ageing over time. 

Renowned photographer Koo Bohnchang has travelled the world photographing antique Korean vessels in prestigious museums, with the hope of ‘reuniting’ these artefacts that were taken out of the country due to war and colonialism through his images. The show also includes never-before-seen works of old Korean farming and fishing tools. 

Rahee Yoon created some sculptural acrylic tables finished with the traditional ‘ottchil’ lacquering technique, which uses tree sap to create an intense dark brown hue. The finish takes two years to fully cure and will keep subtly changing colour until then. 

LA-based ceramic artist Nancy Kwon has created wall hangings that call on her conservation expertise and abstractly resemble ariel footage of rice paddies, towns, and coastlines.

The show takes its name from the generations-old mistranslation, ‘The Land of Morning Calm’, and questions notions of time, place, memory, imagination and history as well as the idea of ‘Koreanness’. ‘This phrase leads me to a place where Koreanness is not absolute, but rather a collection of personal beliefs, meanings, and values that is ever-changing and shape-shifting,’ says Park.

‘Morning Calm’, until 7 January 2023 at Francis Gallery, Los Angeles. francisgallery.co

From Soviet-era bunkers and mediaeval fortifications to Gothic churches and glass skyscrapers, Tallinn pulls in many directions. On the streets, heritage-inspired trams and on-the-spot rental cars (available via transport app Bolt, a local invention) jostle at traffic lights; words of Estonian, some Russian, and English carry a Baltic breeze. A first glance reveals a dynamic population, a booming tourist trade and thriving start-up culture, but behind these scenes lie some familiar East-West tensions, age-old antagonisms that the Tallinn Art Hall is addressing head on. 

Tallinn Art Hall: the history

The local Artists’ Association – still thriving with 1,000 members today – built the original Art Hall in 1934. With its cube-like, Functionalist facade, it was a prominent presence on Freedom Square. A Stalinist extension was added in 1953. 

Many creatives have passed through the institution’s doors, among them leading lights Flo Kasearu, Jaan Toomik and Marge Monko. Now, closed for a two-year renovation, it is decamping to a temporary pavilion in the suburb of Lasnamäe – opening to the public on 19 November 2022.

The two locations could not be more different. While Freedom Square sits on the edge of Tallinn’s Unesco-listed Old Town, which is crammed with medieval monuments preserved in a Disney-like aspic, Lasnamäe is a sprawl of built-but-never-finished Soviet housing, where a 120,000-strong, mainly Russian-speaking Estonian population lives. One bustles with boutiques, bars and tourists, the other is residential and distinctly more modest – if not downright neglected. What prompted such a move?

Paul Aguraiuja, director of Tallinn Art Hall, explains: ‘Many people believe Lasnamäe is a ghetto; they’re afraid they might get beaten up if they go there. In fact, the opposite is true. Likewise, people who live there don't come to the city centre, because they believe it’s full of rich people and they don't belong.’ If people weren’t keen to come to the Art Hall, then the Art Hall would go to them.

‘We could have collaborated with any district in Tallinn,’ adds curator Siim Preiman, who lives in Lasnamäe, ‘but that didn’t feel special at all. We wanted to use this temporary freedom to give the district our undivided attention.’ 

With freedom comes responsibility. Says Aguaraiuja: ‘We want to show that culture can be sustainable, that you can host international exhibitions in a space that does not cost millions to build (the estimated cost is €500,000), and does not go to waste after use.’

Tallinn architecture studio Salto’s 500 sq m pavilion was constructed over two weeks in Lasnamäe’s main square. It is made of Estonian wood and sits next to the 200-seat theatre – the only cultural institution in the area. How long it stays there depends on how it is received. Salto founding partner Maarja Kask says: ‘It’s important the pavilion is not just a pop-up and that locals feel it is theirs.’ 

Kask grew up in Lasnamäe ‘in a happy family in unhappy surroundings’, one of many who lived in the standard-issue five-, nine- and 16-storey high-rises. Since 2004, she and Salto partner Ralf Lõoke have built an international profile and created many landmark projects in their city, among them the Tallinn Cruise Terminal and Fotografiska gallery. They also collaborated with Aguraiuja on the temporary Straw Theatre structure in 2011 (also in Tallinn), a project that led to this commission. The pavilion is no more than 7m high, so residents can ‘look down on it’. The hope is that when the building goes on tour, all parts will ‘have an afterlife’ and a permanent cultural institution will take its place.

 The renovation of the listed building in the city centre will be equally challenging, for different reasons. Estonian architects Kuu and Pink, led by Juhan Rohtla, will work on it, adding 400 sq m of new gallery space, a pedestrianised back courtyard that is currently a car park, and a light-filled top-floor space accessed by an elegant outdoor ramp. The adjoining 20-plus artist studios and the cult basement bar KuKu Klubi will also be renovated. 

In a bid to make the project as sustainable as possible, solar panels and ground source heat pumps will provide energy and all original details will be preserved. ‘It’s a beautiful example of 1930s architecture. We will keep everything,’ says Aguraiuja. 

This has not been the general approach since Estonia declared independence in 1991, where only Tallinn’s Old Town has been protected from a rip-it-down-and-start-again building frenzy. ‘So many great examples of Soviet architecture have been destroyed,’ says Preiman. ‘That era is traumatic for the older generation. But if you take away all the places and markers that allow you to discuss a certain period of history, you lose something.’ Tallinn Art Hall wants to make sure those discussions can continue.

salto.ee

kunstihoone.ee

While Australia’s other major cities – Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide – bring together buildings for the arts in dedicated precincts that spatially declare their commitment to culture, Sydney’s such landmarks are scattered across the city. Among them is the Art Gallery of New South Wales, which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2021, and sits adjacent to the Domain, a park that edges the central business district and the Royal Botanic Gardens. The area has special significance for the Gadigal, the First Peoples who lived and conducted cultural ceremonies there for tens of thousands of years. 

In the late 19th century, architect Walter Vernon was instructed to design an art gallery in the colonial image that was ‘as strictly classical as possible’. The grand sandstone building, inspired by the Scottish National Gallery, encased an earlier brick ‘art barn’ and was constructed in stages between 1896 and 1909. In the past 50 years, the building has seen several elegant modernist extensions, and in 1994, for the first time, included a dedicated gallery for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, albeit on the lowest level. The Art Gallery’s newest building project, Sydney Modern, is, in the words of director Michael Brand, ‘a transformation and expansion’, adding a new wing and extensive landscaping, while updating the old structure. 

In 2013, Japanese architecture practice SANAA won the international competition for the new building, its second win in the city after a 1997 design for a new cinematheque for the Museum of Contemporary Art at Circular Quay (the first collaboration between Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa) failed to go ahead. Fortunately, Sydney Modern, with A$244m in state funding supported by a further A$100m in private money, is confirmed to open its doors this December. 

Brand admits that it was a challenge to create an appropriate building for the spectacular site. SANAA’s solution is a series of spaces that link art and views, inside and out, celebrating vertical and horizontal movement through and across the site. ‘It is a building that breathes with the city, the parkland and the beautiful harbour,’ Sejima says. Visitors will enter via a glass box from an art garden between the old and new buildings. The eye is drawn across the space to varying views, from the glistening city skyline to lush trees and the harbour’s converted wharfs. ‘The atmosphere changes as the sun rises and sets, or with the activities of visitors and commuters alike,’ Sejima adds. 

As with many SANAA projects, the floor gently undulates – sloping upwards towards the shop to the side and across to the lifts and a bridge to an outside terrace. On this prominent entry level, in its rightful place, is a gallery for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art in the first of three limestone-clad boxes, with a new installation featuring narrbong-galang bags in found steel by Wiradjuri artist Lorraine Connelly-Northey. This sits next to a large window overlooking the Art Garden with a new commission by Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi artist Jonathan Jones. 

The vista downwards from the entrance level reveals cascading floors below, with two further enclosed galleries and generous public spaces, cafés, sculpture courts and education rooms. Beneath all, unseen and unexpected, is a large Second World War naval oil tank containing a dense sea of 7m-high columns, a space that instantly excites the imagination. The inaugural commission here will be by Argentinian artist Adrián Villar Rojas.

Brand describes a fruitful two-year-long process, where ‘SANAA’s design was influencing our thinking about what we might do when it’s open, but also our thinking was inspiring the way they were designing’. A section of the column-free contemporary exhibition space will house an epic version of Archive of Mind by Korean artist Kimsooja, where audiences can meditatively shape clay while taking in a spectacular view of the gardens. Similar connections between art, spaces and landscape occur throughout, with a series of site-specific commissions. New curatorial positions in film, performance and music further open up possibilities for innovative programming. 

SANAA’s ethereal glass architecture often seems to float in the landscape, so this building, dug into the side of the escarpment, may come as a surprise. Roofs on slender columns hover over limestone-clad galleries while vast textural rammed-earth walls are built into the stepping site, evocative of Sydney sandstone, one of the city’s building blocks. Here, SANAA’s work complements the material palette and feel of the original building.

As Brand says, the new expansion ‘is more than just a treasure house with collections’. It celebrates the value of art on a civic scale and promises to be a delight to explore, by offering new perspectives of the city and its architecture, as well as the artworks themselves. The building has a generous public spirit that calls on the art gallery’s curatorial and management team to create bold, inclusive programming to match. 

INFORMATION

Sydney Modern opens to the public on 3 December 2022

artgallery.nsw.gov.au

sanaa.co.jp

A version of this article headlines the November 2022 Art Special Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

Soho and the contemporary art world go way back. This centuries-old breeding ground for radical art has been responsible for cultivating the careers of many a canon-steering artist. But even now, when a new gallery moves in, it’s big news. 

Enter Gathering, a new two-floor gallery space on Warwick Street founded by Alex Flick and Trinidad Fombella. Opening in time for Frieze Week 2022, Turner Prize winner Tai Shani inaugurates the space with ‘Your Arms Outstretched Above Your Head, Coding With The Angels’ – an ethereal, psychedelic show exploring power structures and political ideology. 

Flick and Fombella’s vision for the Gathering is a fusion of contemporary international art and social activism, particularly artists focusing on gender, race, queer culture, colonialism, the environment, inequality and marginalisation. 

Wallpaper*: When and how did the idea for Gathering come about? 

Trinidad Fombella: The idea for Gathering had been in the works for a long time, but we started working on it full-time last year. After two years of isolation, of exhibitions being cancelled and feeling as though life had been postponed, we decided it was time to build a place where we could come together physically and intellectually.

Alex Flick: We wanted to create a new, inclusive platform where we could showcase a diverse programme of site-specific exhibitions focusing on our shared passion for immersive installations and radical practices by international artists.

Wallpaper*: Can you describe the vision for the gallery and the artists you hope to work with? 

AF: Our vision for Gathering is guided by our deep interest in showcasing unique artistic voices, and fostering cultural exchange, dialogue and social interventions. To open our gallery with a solo exhibition by Tai Shani is incredibly exciting, her multi-disciplinary practice could not be more relevant, both to our vision and to today’s cultural climate.   

TF: Our guiding principle is that the work we show be innovative, exciting, and artistically and intellectually relevant. We are particularly interested in radical, experimental and multidisciplinary artists. Tai has been making work in this realm for nearly two decades, but her exhibitions have mostly lived within institutional frameworks. She is known for large-scale installations, and constellations of enigmatic works that make poetic environments which are politically charged and actively address power structures. 

Wallpaper*: Why was it so important to anchor the gallery in social activism (the Gallery Climate Coalition, Embode and The Anti-Slavery Collective) from the outset? And how will this inform your programming? 

TF: The environment is an issue that we care about deeply. Gallery Climate Coalition is a brilliant initiative that really creates awareness about how even the smallest changes you can make as a company have a larger impact. We also see it as a blueprint for how the art world can band together for causes that are important to humanity. 

AF: From the outset we wanted Gathering’s ethos to encompass issues that are very close to our hearts. We see our work with both Embode and The Anti-Slavery Collective as opportunities to highlight their important work and to collaborate with exceptional people. We are currently developing a campaign of limited-edition graphic T-shirts coinciding with each exhibition, designed by the artists we will show. All proceeds of the sales will be going to our initiative with Embode. 

Wallpaper*: Why did you choose Tai Shani for the inaugural exhibition? 

TF: Tai Shani is an artist we have long admired for her contributions to contemporary art discourse and beyond. Her work and social activism are complex and fearless, and her values and ideas are clearly defined in her multi-disciplinary practice and in all aspects of her life and work. A former teacher at the Royal College of Art and joint 2019 Turner Prize winner, Tai is extremely well respected and admired in the art community. 

AF: To open our gallery in London, the place we call home, with a British artist of her calibre, who has a strong social commitment and who has never had a commercial exhibition in the city before, expresses our vision in every possible way. Tai’s practice revolves around experimental texts, fantastical images and sculptural works in which she re-imagines feminine otherness, building a world of cosmologies, myths and histories that confront established narratives which need to be challenged. An immersive other-worldly installation will be taking over our lower gallery floor and it will only be reachable through a screening of Tai’s nine-chapter film The Neon Hieroglyph. A must-see experience for those who can make it to London this autumn.

Wallpaper*: Can you describe the architectural approach for the space, and why you chose Matheson Whiteley for the design?

AF: We wanted a space to mirror the challenging and ambitious programme we have planned. We are always looking to collaborate with people who can understand our vision and complement it. Matheson Whiteley have an incredible reputation with great projects under their belts, such as Studio Voltaire and Thomas Dane Gallery. 

TF: Jason Whiteley and James Bailey have inspired us with ideas that have shaped a unique architecture with raw, overlapping spaces and carefully designed suspended lighting structures. The existing space was stripped-out and renovated throughout, exposing the structural frame and revealing fragments of older walls and structural systems which have such a strong character.

INFORMATION

Tai Shani, ‘Your Arms Outstretched Above Your Head, Coding With The Angels’, Gathering, London, 6 October – 6 December 2022. gathering.london

Part party pad, part cosy home, a newly redesigned space at Shulamit Nazarian Gallery in Los Angeles by Studio Shamshiri bridges eras and functions. But beyond being a beautifully balanced workspace, a hub for culture and a true LA arts crowd haunt, this is a space born out of a seamless collaboration and a long-standing friendship – a strong recipe for success. Gallery founder Shulamit Nazarian and Pamela Shamshiri met through their mutual friend, Wallpaper* US director Michael Reynolds seven years ago, and synergy flowed. ‘We had lunch together and it was instant love,’ recalls Nazarian. 

The commission for this new space, an extended display area with an office and meeting room, came much more recently, after Shamshiri worked on the gallerist's own home, and following Nazarian’s purchase of her Hollywood art base, which opened in 2017. This property's second floor, the location of this project, was originally a private apartment, a relatively open-plan space featuring two bedrooms and three bathrooms. Nazarian wanted to reimagine it as an extension to her downstairs gallery – but also as a space with a distinct identity. She called upon Shamshiri. 

‘We had big imaginations at the beginning. But then we simplified,' says Nazarian, whose background in design and architecture was a catalyst in this dynamic collaboration. The LA gallery scene of the 1950s and early 1960s was a key source of inspiration for the pair, who wanted to infuse the new space with the comfort of a domestic home, a cosy interior that makes everyone feel welcome, and the glamour and unexpected fun of an impromptu party.

‘[Much of the inspiration came from] the idea of this legendary party, and its afterparty upstairs,’ says Shamshiri. So the team decided to eliminate one of the bathrooms and use the room for a staircase that leads up to the roof terrace, which opened up a world of opportunities in terms of its use. ‘It brings the element of surprise, transporting you to a different world,’ Shamshiri explains. 

The interior is a careful composition of warmth and roughness, matching contemporary product design with exposed brick walls, painted masonry, and smooth, almost industrial-feeling resin floors. A series of front window boxes opens up in the same way the shutters at Le Corbusier's famous Cabanon worked – easily and efficiently changing the views according to their orientation. Of course, the end result's seeming effortlessness didn't come without its challenges. ‘The staircase was one of them,' Shamshiri says. ‘It was technically, and code-wise challenging; it moved a few times. But now it has this energy, it draws you up.' 

Bespoke pieces sit next to vintage finds and of course, plenty of art, making this space at once luxurious but also very grounded. There is a denim sofa, the ‘Jofa’ by Wendy White, which was specifically done as a collaboration between Studio Shamshiri and the artist, as well as art pieces by Coady Brown, Michael Stamm, Bridget Mullen and Fay Ray. It all comes together in an interior that feels functional and flexible, yet still playful and transportive. 

Ultimately, Nazarian concludes, the space was meant to bring together like-minded people. ‘[We wanted it to] be like a think tank, for people who like art, to entertain, to host all aspects that art and design connections, where people can communicate, exchange ideas and get inspired. It’s functional, but also a space where you can just relax. Put your hair down and sit back and enjoy.'

It is exactly this spirit of experimentation, avant-garde creation and pure fun that Shamshiri drew on for her design. ‘Frank Gehry’s deconstructivist era also inspired us, as it was about art, and there was a freedom. Los Angeles felt like a playground. Our focus is not to have it feel too “design”. It started as an afterparty place, and it became more serious, while keeping its sense of playfulness.'

INFORMATION

studioshamshiri.com

shulamitnazarian.com

Merging nature, art and architecture, Valley Gallery, the latest build by Tadao Ando on Naoshima, is the Pritzker Prize-winning architect’s most conceptual design to date. It marks 30 years since his first building on the island, the Benesse House Museum, which was Naoshima’s first art museum, as well as a hotel. Nestled in the base of a deep valley, the new gallery is a modest structure with an angular steel roof and a trapezoidal floor plan informed by the landscape. Ando aimed ‘to create an independent architectural space while preserving as much of the existing topography and trees as possible’, in order to make the most of the site’s potential.

Covering a total floor area of 96 sq m, Valley Gallery consists of a white-walled room within an external concrete shell. Both are housed under an angular 12mm steel-plate roof reminiscent of origami folds, and accentuated by two corner openings at 30 degrees, framing the outside sky and revealing seasonal changes – wind, rain, sunshine or snow. The interior uses only natural illumination, with the angled skylights casting shadows on the concrete walls throughout the day, forming sharp silhouettes akin to a sundial. Ando says: ‘As a means of creating such an architectural space as a microcosm, I came up with the scheme of a space as simple and pure as a white canvas [with] natural light entering into it. A void in which everything superfluous has been erased, coloured by light that shifts with time and the seasons.’

His ninth building on the island, and part of the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, Valley Gallery is unlike any conventional art experience. Along the winding path that leads to the entrance, visitors pass a small lake with mirrored stainless steel spheres on its banks, part of Yayoi Kusama’s Narcissus Garden installation. Nearby is Tsuyoshi Ozawa’s Slag Buddha 88, which features 88 Buddha statuettes created using slag from illegally dumped industrial waste. Both pre-existing works, they have been on the island since 2006 and have recently been relocated and extended for the new gallery.

The uphill journey is intentionally elongated, allowing time for reflective pause in the surrounding nature, particularly in spring when azaleas and cherry trees are in bloom. ‘For a gallery to be a special place for art, the space on the approach to it is very important,’ adds Ando. ‘Like the entrance to a tea ceremony room, the slight change in the sequence of visitors’ steps leads their attention to the gallery.’

Ando’s architecture occupies the island’s most challenging and remote sites, connected by the theme of a ‘coexistence with nature’. It ranges from Chichu Art Museum, built into a mountaintop, to his own namesake museum, situated inside a 100-year-old timber house. With Valley Gallery, the architect intends to created a reflective, meditative atmosphere.

‘Like a Japanese shrine, we were aiming for an architecture with a certain spatiality that exists as a spiritual pillar for the people, even if on a modest scale,’ explains Ando. ‘By inserting stimulating artwork into this space, I hoped to create a microcosm, a small but infinitely deep space.’ The building exemplifies the trifecta of art, architecture and nature in harmony, making the journey to the island that much more profound.

INFORMATION

benesse-artsite.jp

tadao-ando.com

A version of this article appears in the May 2022 issue of Wallpaper*. Subscribe today!

Kunsthalle Praha, a major new not-for-profit arts and culture organisation has opened its doors to the public in the Czech capital. 

The building housing the new institution began as the Zenger Electrical Substation in the 1930s, generating electricity for the city’s tram and trolleybus network. The station became defunct as technology evolved, but was acquired by the Pudil Family Foundation in 2015 with the intention of giving the building a new life as Kunsthalle Praha. The institution focuses on 20th-century and contemporary Czech and international art and will function as an ‘open meeting point’ where art lives but also engages a wide audience.

Czech architecture studio Schindler Seko was tasked with reimagining the building as an art destination, which now comprises three large galleries, a bistro, a café and an extensive retail space. But it wasn’t without challenges.

Structural issues and contamination rendered the building’s original skeleton unfit for purpose; it was gutted and replaced with a monolithic concrete structure with the monument-protected facade kept intact. ‘It’s hard to create a good contemporary art space in a building that’s not purpose-built,’ says Ivana Goossen, director of Kunsthalle Praha. ‘[But] it gave us an opportunity to create a space that was really made for art.’

While the collection is important to the identity of the institution, it won’t form the primary focus. ‘From the beginning, we never wanted this place to be a temple for the collection,’ Goossen explains. ‘[The collection] allows us to exchange; when we request something on loan, we’re able to give something on loan. So it is a very important part of what we do, but we never intended to have a permanent show of the collection. We wanted to live the “kunsthalle” concept.’

This has created a model built on cooperation and a diverse mix of thematic and solo exhibitions, for which Kunsthalle Praha often partners with external curators and artists to develop a vision for each show. ‘Depending on the exhibition, the artists, and the opportunity, we will support the creation of new work. It’s a larger story we want to tell. I think it’s so important for artists to have the support to venture into a new area,’ says Goossen. 

Kunsthalle Praha inaugural show: ‘Kinetismus: 100 Years of Electricity in Art’

The opening exhibition ‘Kinetismus: 100 Years of Electricity in Art’ is an ode to the original fabric of Kunsthalle Praha. On view until 20 June 2022, the show surveys how electricity has transformed movements and artistic practices from the start of the 20th century to the contemporary era. 

Though the show is international and multi-generational, at its heart is a tribute to the work of Czech avant-garde art pioneer Zdeněk Pešánek. In 1936, the artist created a kinetic light sculpture titled 100 Years of Electricity for the facade of the Zenger substation, yet the installation mysteriously vanished before it got the chance, surviving only in the form of models. The Kunsthalle Praha team, spearheaded by guest curator Peter Weibel, chose to focus on bringing Pešánek’s ideas back to life, in dialogue with a century of electricity-driven art. 

This optically dazzling and comprehensive exhibition involves more than 90 works organised into four categories: cinematography, kinetic art, cybernetic art, and computer art. Visitors will encounter everything from the trailblazing experiments of Bauhaus-affiliated figures to cutting-edge immersive technology by teamLab. The show will include the work of pioneers such as Mary Ellen Bute, Carlos Cruz-Diez, László Moholy-Nagy, Martha Boto and Marcel Duchamp; established living icons such as Julio Le Parc, Cerith Wyn Evans and William Kentridge; and other leading contemporary names including Ryoji Ikeda, Refik Anadol, Shilpa Gupta, Olafur Eliasson, Xavier Veilhan, Random International, and Angela Bulloch. 

Alongside the inaugural show, Kunsthalle Praha has also unveiled a permanent commission by conceptual artist Mark Dion titled Cabinet of Electrical Curiosities, as well as a separate exhibition, ‘Electrical Substation: Electricity in Architecture, Electricity in the City’ which explores the building’s rich industrial past, and Prague’s history more broadly.

INFORMATION

’Kinetismus: 100 Years of Electricity in Art’, until 20 June 2022, Kunsthalle Praha. kunsthallepraha.org

Argo Factory Contemporary Art Museum & Cultural Centre, the first hub of its kind to be built in Tehran in over 40 years, was completed and due to launch in 2020. Yet due to the pandemic and local political circumstances in Iran, it's only now that the team behind it, Iranian-Austrian architect Ahmadreza Schricker, founder of ASA North, and his client, Pejman Foundation, are able to celebrate its opening.

The project is the ambitious conversion of the 1920s Argo Factory – a 480 sq m brewery in downtown Tehran – into a 1,850 sq m home for the arts. The majestic, beautifully monolithic building complex now spans six gallery halls, an auditorium, a library, artist residency and event spaces, a private studio apartment, retail, and a VIP observation deck – there is even a re-issued Argo non-alcoholic draft beer bar.

The project was part restoration, part new build, as the architecture team, including collaborating architects Hobgood Architects (headed by Patrick Hobgood) who were involved in the project's concept phase, had to balance the tightrope between old and new. The existing foundations had to be reinforced (at places entirely rebuilt) and the brick materiality of the overall complex maintained. At the same time, five new, pitched concrete roof structures now top the centre and a new 70 sq m, concrete-clad structure houses the artist residency areas. 'I do not worship Argo, with its many industrial architectural twins around the world, I love Argo. In 2017, the factory’s roofs were missing and as a sign of respect for the old, we placed five new floating roofs on top of the remaining structure. Natural light flows in from the articulated split between old and new, and the newly inserted structural foundation allows the floating architectural “hats” to give another character to an already strong personality,' explains Schricker. 

Bricks from the original structure were recycled and reused where possible, although in places where the walls are entirely new, a different kind of mortar was used to subtly highlight the difference between time periods across the building's skin. Inside, the exposed brick character of the structure continues in all its glory, providing a tactile, yet neutral enough and versatile backdrop for art display. Meanwhile, a flowing, dramatic, 12m-long staircase becomes a key centrepiece in the main ground and upper gallery floors, created without any middle supports in a feat of poured-in-situ concrete engineering.

Schricker adds: ‘Similar to the roof of the Bazaar of Isfahan, the new floating concrete roofs play multiple roles: as deep skylights, they keep the heat out while filtering the light in for the galleries and they also dance with the neighbouring roofs of downtown Tehran. Lastly, as a symbolic nod or “tip of the hat”, they greet the city' as it welcomes back Argo.

Previously at OMA/AMO in New York and Herzog & de Meuron in Basel, Schricker works on a range of scales, internationally, from his New York base and his two-pronged practice – ASA North is a more 'traditional' architecture practice, while its sister studio, ASA South, operates in the virtual realm. Ongoing work in the Asia region by ASA North includes the first, new-build Virtual Museum for art collector Mohammed Afkhami in Dubai, and the masterplan of a 7,800 sq m cultural centre around Saba Manouchehri’s textile collection in the city of Kashan, Iran.

INFORMATION

pejman.foundation

asanorth.com

hobgoodarchitects.com

Utopia, by definition, can never be reached. When Thomas More coined the term in 1516, he imagined an ideal world, a self-contained community where people shared the same culture, values and way of life. ‘Utopia’ was also a pun, based on almost-identical Greek words for ‘no place’ and ‘a good place’. 

The Barbican Centre was, and remains, a place where utopian ideas are made tangible. Designed by young architecture firm Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, the labyrinthine complex symbolised a corner of London rising from the war-torn ashes; an example of the shifting worlds of arts and culture in the post-war era, and an icon of modern, democratic living. Under a single, 40-acre architectural vision, it encompassed theatre and dance, music of all genres, visual arts, cinema and education, setting its stages for a wide range of artists, communities, audiences and visitors. 

The Barbican Centre: ‘one of the modern wonders of the world’

When it opened in 1982, its reception ranged from scalding hot to ice cold. Some applauded its brave futurism (

even Queen Elizabeth II hailed it as ‘one of the modern wonders of the world’); others despised its brazen brutalism. Through fame and infamy, brutal name-calling and calls for its demolition, 40 years later, it remains a melting pot of international arts, and one of the most sought-after residential postcodes in Europe.  

As Nicholas Kenyon, editor of new book Building Utopia: The Barbican Centre, notes in his preface: ‘Some have hated it, some have loved it, but millions have made use of the Barbican over four decades of near-continuous activity, and have come to value its profound contribution to civic and urban life.’

Published by Batsford, Building Utopia coincides with the Barbican Centre's 40th anniversary and explores the history of this inimitable institution and the blueprint to its longevity. ‘I think the secret of the Barbican is to always be uncompromising in its search for quality and variety, believing that there’s no conflict between excellence and popularity,’ says Kenyon, who served as managing director of the Barbican Centre from 2007 to 2021. ‘The Barbican has always cast its net wide to gather in the most international of the arts, and to provide [them] at reasonable prices to the widest possible audience.’

The book contains rare illustrative material from the Barbican’s archives, some never before seen in print. ‘The biggest surprise to me in looking through the archives was not how long it took – we’d always known that the Barbican as a building project took ages! – but the number of changes there were in the design as the arts centre emerged as a priority,’ Kenyon reflects. ‘There are literally thousands of architects’ drawings of the details. I looked and looked for evidence of the Barbican myth that the building was only approved by a one-vote majority in the City, but I couldn’t find it. However, there were many close votes as the project proceeded.’

The book is bolstered with essays by eminent critics who have lived and breathed the centre’s history and art forms. Cultural historian Robert Hewison reflects on how the centre came into being, and architectural historian Elain Harwood offers a deep dive into the building’s design. Elsewhere, we find Fiona Maddocks on music, Lyn Gardner on theatre, Sukhdev Sandhu on cinema, and Tony Chambers on visual arts. 

Chambers, creative director, former Wallpaper* editor-in-chief and self-professed ‘huge Barbican fanboy’, takes readers on a journey through visual arts. He first encountered the building in 1983 on a trip to London for an interview at the Central School of Art. But his love for the place was cemented in 1994 when he rented an apartment in Gilbert House, which he bought in 2000 and still calls home. ‘I was blown away by the modernity and sheer un-Englishness of the arts centre and the surrounding residential estate: it had more in common with the Bauhaus architecture I’d recently been introduced to on my art foundation course in Liverpool,’ his essay recounts.

Chambers takes us through seminal shows, from the inaugural ‘blockbuster’, ‘Aftermath: France 1945 – 55: New Images of Man’ (1982), to epoch-capturing surveys such as photography group show ‘Through The Looking Glass' (1989), and concept-based exhibitions like ‘Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now’ (2007).

The Barbican Art Gallery has, over the years, developed a knack for anticipating future stars (Grayson Perry exhibited in 2002, a year before he won the Turner Prize); shown an ability to widen its global appeal with commercially orientated shows like ‘The Art of Star Wars’ (2000); and extended its authority not just in fine art, but in the realms of architecture, design and fashion, and everything in between.

Chambers’ essay, and Building Utopia more broadly, highlight the feather-ruffling, intersection-seeking, headline-grabbing role the Barbican Art Gallery has played over the years. A fearless arbiter of art that didn’t always get it right, but earned a rightful place in cultural history. ‘The Barbican Art Gallery at 40 is a remarkable story: of how, despite modest beginnings and a difficult environment, a long line of dedicated curators and directors with brave and imaginative programming have established a world-renowned reputation and identity,’ says Chambers. 

In 40 years, the Barbican Centre has proved itself to be not only a building complex, but a cultural microcosm where getting lost and losing yourself are both inevitable. 

Few buildings have split opinion to such extremes or made the boundaries between creative disciplines so utterly indistinguishable. It was born as an experimental multi-arts centre, and ended up as a catalyst for all conceivable arts – a creative manifesto made concrete. 

INFORMATION

Building Utopia: The Barbican Centre by Nicholas Kenyon (ed) is published by Batsford, £40, batsfordbooks.com

There is no certainty in the work of Noémie Goudal. Landscapes are blended and perspectives constructed. Depth is illusory, time elastic; images are corrupted, others performed. 

Like the territories through which she journeys, Goudal’s practice flows and erupts with knowledge, both ancient and modern. Theories emerge from the dusty leaves of natural history and through the probing of remnant geology. Prehistoric territories are figured in ways both primal and technological – from paper craft to optical engineering. It is a realm of theatrics and conjuring; but also of philosophy and discovery. 

Whilst for the last decade Goudal’s work has scoured notions of time and geography, her current corpus, Post Atlantica, is attuned specifically towards paleoclimatology – the study of past climate; surveying deep expanses of the past, in a bid to steal a glimpse of the future. It is the precise melting point which ‘triggers the imagination’, she says. 

The work’s latest iteration – produced in the last nine months – forms the inaugural show at Edel Asstanti’s new Fitzrovia gallery, on the site of former Ames House, the first YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) hostel, from 1904. Redesigned by London-based architects Sanchez Benton, the new space pays homage to its historic role in women’s emancipation in the late 19th century, whilst retaining the essence of its original Arts & Crafts style – awash with natural light and with a generosity of proportions across its ‘connected family of rooms’, as the Sanchez Benton team describe it. 

Centre stage, a 4m-high jittering installation, Phoenix, rises into the rafters. A glitching matrix of tropical palms, it is in fact a photographic anamorphosis, formed from an already ‘decomposed’ image. ‘Everyone says an image is flat. I don’t think so at all,’ Goudal says. Phoenix is about the exhaustion of imagery, and of the limits of trust. The pace at which our planet is changing is beyond comprehension, and indeed it was within our own anthropocentric timeframe that we believed the world was flat. 

Approaching the gallery from dual entrances on Little Titchfield Street and Mortimer Street, a triptych of spaces gives way to photographic triptychs (amongst sculptures and film). There are three snowy Pyrenean scarps (Plongée), inspired by the study of 300-million-year-old water droplets by naturalist Camille Dusséaux. Only on close inspection do they disclose Goudal’s signature staged interventions: cardboard and paper ‘literally cutting through the mountains’, as the artist describes, in conscious mimicry of Dusséaux’s geological ‘splicing’. A wall projection depicts three jagged shores from Collioure, on the southern French coast, Untitled (Waves) – black volcanic rocks are battered by a storm. ‘They are so expressive, those rocks,’ Goudal reflects; it is a landscape treasured by the artist since childhood.

With both series, Goudal’s three-act process – research, expedition and chance encounters – lends layers of intensity. Latterly she is learning more how to ‘go with the flow’ in finding inspiration. From the serendipity of spring melt waters in Cirque de Gavarnie (it was as if ‘the mountain was crying’ Goudal recounts) to confronting the full force of a coastal storm; she is poised to adapt. 

‘Post Atlantica’ reveals the rising vitality of the performative in Goudal’s practice. Whilst her constructions may otherwise be enacted ‘in two seconds on Photoshop’, physical journeying and graft are processes she needs, ‘the experience of living something with people’. The photograph, meanwhile, is far from mere document. It is a canvas to talk about environmental issues, ‘the vestige of ‘a beautiful moment’, she says. 

The final work in Goudal’s London exhibition, Inhale, Exhale, is both a literal and figurative bridge spanning this tussle between idea and action. The film’s subject is the Bering Strait (which evidence suggests froze over during the last ice age allowing humans to cross the Arctic to reach the American continent), and it is instilled with the political and meteorological drama of this geography, yet through an altogether alternate, equatorial landscape. As the film breathes in, then out, a 3m-high backdrop rises and falls from a swamp, an homage to sails from ancient seas, and a nod to ‘land that is travelling’. We might temporarily alter our perspective, but there is no escaping the epic movements of the planet. Inhale, Exhale is about questioning ‘what belongs to the land…and how we shift our world’. 

Kitsch, chimera and apparition are all central to Goudal’s probing gestures. ‘The illusion helps to question this image,’ she asserts. Like each of us, works are conceived, made, performed and extinguished. The past is slippery and the future more hazy still. But what Noémie Goudal manages to conjure with crystal, hallucinatory clarity, is the constant shifting of this ground. 

INFORMATION

Noémie Goudal: ’Post Atlantica’, until 12 March 2022, Edel Assanti, London. edelassanti.com

Among Gagosian’s 19 locations worldwide, its latest Manhattan gallery, Gagosian 541 West 24th Street, in New York’s Chelsea neighbourhood, has flown under the radar, having opened in March 2020, just a few weeks before the city went into lockdown. The 541 space’s relative obscurity belies its roster of heavy-hitting shows, which has included Ed Ruscha, Gerhard Richter, John Currin, Brice Marden and, as of this month, Damien Hirst, with a body of work entitled ‘Forgiving and Forgetting’, which debuted in Rome in 2021.

Gagosian has ample square footage in the neighbourhood, including a commanding foothold at 555 West 24th Street (home to its most ambitious programming, such as last year’s ‘Social Works’, curated by Antwaun Sargent), and another space on West 21st Street. But the space at 541 West 24th Street possesses a refined and mercurial quality that seems to have resonated with art’s aforementioned big names.

There is an element of provenance – the space used to accommodate two galleries, the once legendary Mary Boone Gallery and the still illustrious Pace Gallery (the latter has moved into larger premises one block north). But the new inhabitant’s appeal is more likely down to its sophisticated renovation by Caplan Colaku Architecture, the New York firm that has collaborated with Gagosian recurrently over the years. Caplan Colaku also oversaw the overhaul of Gagosian’s uptown space at 980 Madison Avenue, and is currently finishing the gallery’s offices right above.

‘What is unique about gallery design is that it is an entirely empty space that is effectively invisible,’ says Jonathan Caplan, a veritable gallery specialist given his past work with The Bass museum in Miami, Gladstone Gallery and Petzel Gallery in New York, as well as numerous exhibition designs. ‘Invisibility is an interesting challenge in itself, especially when the space also needs to be capable of showing from one month to another vastly different kinds of exhibitions: huge abstract paintings, miniature portraits, monumental sculptures, ephemeral installations, film, performance, light works, group shows.

‘Designing a gallery is in certain respects like [designing] a church hall or school gym, which has the potential to be a badminton court, a basketball court, a running track, a dance floor, an assembly hall, a vaccination centre, a theatre, a place of worship, a polling station, an examination room, a storage space. But the similarity ends with the diversity, because other multi-programmatic spaces do not need to be simultaneously neutral and undistracting, and at the same time characterful and sympathetic.’

At 541 West 24th Street, the firm refreshed the street-level space by combining two separate areas and concealing some of the distinctive features that had remained, including historic wood trusses and an exposed decked ceiling. In its place, a clean horizontal plane extends towards the space’s luminous skylight, which in turn hovers above the length of the gallery at double-height.

The mix of volumes elegantly contracts and expands at different points throughout the space, often opening up towards sources of natural light, be it in the main gallery space or in the more introspective auxiliary space, where the skylight has been manipulated and reconfigured to ensure an even distribution of natural light below.

In such a setting, Hirst’s mash-up of cartoon character sculptures, made from white Carrara and pink Portuguese marble, and new Reverence Paintings take on an otherworldly aura. Caplan says that it was important to ‘[anticipate] how all sorts of artworks, sometimes from very different eras and many that haven't been imagined yet, [could] each be shown to their own best effect. The space itself [needs] to provide a feeling of continuity and permanence through time, with its own particular character and atmosphere, maintaining an unassuming demeanour while embodying and expressing the mission and identity of the gallery as an organisation.’

He adds, ‘Points of differentiation in part evolve from the givens of the site itself and existing conditions of the property, not least the proportions of the space. In the case of 541, you could say that the special feature that we were striving for was simplicity and spareness. We wanted to [give] flourish [to] the space, and make it feel emotionally lighter by paring it down to a feeling of just space and light.’

INFORMATION

gagosian.com

caplancolaku.com

Located in south-east China, about an hour’s drive from Shanghai, Hangzhou has historically been an important hub for artists and scholars. In recent times, it has earned an enviable reputation for cultivating and exporting art and culture. Hangzhou cemented its artistic credentials with the opening last December – after nine years of preparation – of By Art Matters, the cultural centre and main architectural feature of the city’s OōEli multi-use complex.  

By Art Matters’ inaugural exhibition, ‘A Show About Nothing’, explores the concept of ‘nothingness’. Bringing together more than 30 local and international artists – including Francis Alÿs from Belgium, Maurizio Cattelan from Italy, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Yoko Ono from Japan, and Cady Noland and Robert Grosvenor from the US – the show was proposed by the museum’s director Francesco Bonami, and curated by Stefano Collicelli Cagol together with Wu Tian and Sun Man.

One interpretation of the subject is German artist Hans Haacke’s White Sail (1964 – 1965). White fabric floating in mid-air is loosely mounted on the wall by thin threads and weights. Its form is determined both by artificial wind and visitors’ movements, making visible the otherwise unnoticeable interplay between the space, the people and the artworks within it. Museum visitors are all too often overloaded with images and information at the expense of the artistic experience. And while conventional exhibitions tell the stories of others, ‘A Show About Nothing’ ‘invites you to tell your own story’, says Bonami. ‘The exhibition is a toast to empty spaces, the nothingness in our everyday lives.’ 

Visitors can seek their own interpretation of nothingness through a selection of seminal Chinese artworks on display including those by Zhengzhou artist Geng Jianyi, who had been an active voice in the 85 New Wave art movement and was an accomplished painter before venturing into performance, photography, installation and video. In the series The Reason Why Classic Is, Immerse and Ten Seconds Immersion (12) (both 1999), empty books of different textures and binding methods have been soaked in dye for varying lengths of time. As the colours bleed towards the centre of the books, they form a symmetrical pattern yet with subtle differences each time. Books are a representation of wisdom and authority, and through these works Geng aimed to denounce how ideologies infiltrate societies through cultural media. 

Shandong artist Liu Guoqiang’s Untitled (2021) consists of nine small digital screens, each showing a dissected minute hand of a clock in a one-minute video loop that plays asynchronously. A complete image of the clock will never be formed, yet it still depicts the notion of time as an undeniably dominant force in reality, no matter how we try to distort it. Bread (2020), by Swedish artist Ghislaine Leung, releases a bread-like aroma through an under-floor ventilation system. The presence of the sensory installation signifies that experience and engagement are both essential in a cultural institution. 

Situated between the picturesque West Lake (a Unesco World Heritage Site) and Xixi Wetland, OōEli – designed by architect Renzo Piano – has a notched trapezoidal layout, about 260m x 175m, composed of 17 buildings with public space and greenery. By Art Matters resides in building number one, which is designed as the starting point for visitors to the complex. It is Piano’s first museum building in China, envisaged as a hub of the international and domestic art scene and a centre for research and artistic practice, where nature, art, architecture and culture intersect. The nine-storey structure has a total exhibition area of about 2,000 sq m, with a lecture hall, library, office spaces, a meditation tea house created by Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija and a harvestable tea tree garden on the roof – a tribute to Hangzhou as the hometown of Longjing tea.  

The museum team also commissioned British artist Richard Long to create a site-specific installation, Boulder Line, in the complex, and initiated a collaboration between Theaster Gates and the B1OCK concept store, where the American artist proposed ideas for the interior space, including antique objects and an installation of eight mixed-media artworks – a minimalist hybrid of exhibition and retail.

INFORMATION

‘A Show About Nothing’, until 8 May 2022, By Art Matters

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Atchugarry (MACA), Uruguay’s new contemporary art venue, has just opened its doors to the public. The major cultural destination, spearheaded by the Pablo Atchugarry Foundation, the Uruguayan sculptor’s Miami-based non-profit institution, has been designed by celebrated Uruguayan architect Carlos Ott. The new scheme, located in Punta del Este, is the ‘first and only museum in Uruguay promoting global contemporary art’, say its representatives. 

The building unfolds as a dynamic wave or the bow of a ship, a curvaceous structure that appears almost to be moving on its landscaped terrain. It is wrapped in glass- and aluminium-clad enclosures that shimmer in the sun, and an aluminium roof that is held up by an impressive timber frame construction, made of Red Grandis eucalyptus. The sweeping curves of the timber elements cleverly allow for column-free interiors and large halls that can be flexible and accommodate exhibitions of different scales. 

Set in expansive grounds, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Atchugarry opened with fresh artwork by Atchugarry himself, but also a temporary show of work by Christo and Jeanne-Claude – whom the sculptor admires greatly. There are also shows with works from the permanent collection, by artists including Richard Anuszkiewicz, Carmelo Arden Quin, Pablo Atchugarry, José Pedro Costigliolo, Carlos Cruz Diez, Sandú Darié, Jorge Eielson and Wifredo Lam, among many others. Displays are arranged across five flexible exhibition halls and a sculpture park – catering for outdoor art of all scopes and sizes.

‘There is a common concern among artists and collectors, which consists in thinking about where their works will go, the fruit of a lifetime, the passion that has always accompanied them,’ says Atchugarry, who led the project. ‘So, a few years ago, the idea of building a museum was born, right within the Pablo Atchugarry Foundation, which is in some way the cultural heritage that I leave for Uruguay. I think that MACA will belong to humanity and that, like a ship loaded with art, life and dreams, it will lead us to a world of greater understanding and love.’ The museum will be headed by director Leonardo Noguéz. 

INFORMATION 

carlosott.com

The area surrounding Jerusalem’s industrial Sapir Center has long served as a pilgrimage for creatives. Located in the city’s south-west region, it’s home to artist studios, yeshivas (Jewish educational institutions), as well as Bezalel Academy of Art and Design's ultra-Orthodox branch. Its latest addition is the new outpost of Gordon Gallery, known as one of Tel Aviv’s most distinguished and long-standing art institutions. 

‘We are thrilled to usher in the next era of Gordon Gallery and further progress the dialogue between secular Israeli art and the religious connotation of Jerusalem,’ explains Amon Yariv, the gallery’s director, ‘the dichotomy of the new space and solo shows by two innovative painters to attract art seekers to explore Israeli art from a new perspective.’

The space – which will also feature a publicly accessible library and archive – has been inaugurated with two solo exhibitions by Israeli artists Ofer Lellouche and Aviva Uri, on view until 5 February 2022. At the heart of Lellouche’s exhibition, titled ‘Recent works’ is an imposing bronze sculpture, The Hug, whose raw, earthy colours reflect the building’s history. Nine of Lellouche’s reliefs line the walls and offer insight into the conception of the sculpture. 

Meanwhile, ‘Death in God’s Realm’ presents iconic works by Israeli artist Aviva Uri, ranging from work created in the 1960s, through to the time of her death in 1984. The works are infused with raw gestures – scenes of both angst and vitality – which continue to influence a generation of Israeli artists. 

The industrial space has been given new life by Tel Aviv-based Salty Architects, who have transformed the neglected workshop into a light-drenched space while retaining the rugged, industrial history of the building’s past. ‘The challenge was to set the space apart from its surroundings without being ostentatious,’ say architects Motti Rauchwerger and Hadar Menkes.

‘Inside the gallery, we designed a circular space, and it is important that one can keep moving in the space and be surprised. One of the surprises was the natural light in this industrial area. Once we opened the façade, we realised that wonderful natural light permeates the space.’

INFORMATION
gordongallery.co.il

The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art has announced that Japanese architecture firm SANAA will oversee the renovation of the Hexagon pavilion, converting the disused Moscow landmark into a major new exhibition hub. The Garage Museum extension heralds a new chapter for the museum in its ongoing efforts to repurpose architectural heritage in the city and revitalise it in a contemporary context.

The Hexagon – a listed 1920s Soviet structure designed by Russian architect Ivan Zholtovsky – has lived many lives. Originally constructed for 1923’s First All-Russian Agricultural and Handicraft Industries Exhibition, the pavilion was converted into a canteen in 1935 and repurposed for lemonade production in the 1960s. In the decades that followed, it served as a café, a restaurant, a beer garden, a cinema and a disco, until it was abandoned. The Hexagon today stands partially ruined following a series of fires.

In its newest incarnation as an exhibition centre, the Hexagon will encompass three galleries, a library, a bookstore, a café and a courtyard spanning some 9,500 sq m of functional space. ‘In keeping with the spirit of Zholtovsky’s original design, we tried to avoid partitions or different types of organisations within the space and tried to bring it back to his vision,’ explained the architects. ‘We were fascinated by the original transparency of the space. The Hexagon has a particular charm and we have tried to retain that in our design.’

To wit, SANNA’s concept is guided by six principles: geometry and proportion; connected spaces; daylight; spatial organisation; decorative and interior elements; and landscape. Moscow’s dramatic climate poses its own set of challenges too, which architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa have addressed with advanced envelope and heat recovery systems, and high-performance glazing. 

Garage Museum extension set to transform the Hexagon

The Garage Museum was established in 2008 by Dasha Zhukova and Roman Abramovich as the first philanthropic organisation in Russia devoted to contemporary art and culture. In 2015, the museum relocated to its permanent home in the former Vremena Goda restaurant, a Soviet-era modernist ruin resurrected by Rem Koolhaas’ firm OMA. Garage has collaborated with a number of architectural studios, including Shigeru Ban, Form Bureau, Snkh, Syndicate, and Grace.

‘The Hexagon will be revived by SANAA’s thoughtful and sensitive design, allowing Garage to ground itself in Russian history while expanding into the current global conversation,’ Zhukova says in a statement. ‘We want to ensure that our building reflects our ongoing inquiry into the function, purpose, and responsibility of the modern-day museum.’ 

INFORMATION

sanaa.co.jp

garagemca.org

The traditional art world gallery model is no stranger to being challenged, but a new enterprise from David Zwirner is particularly significant in ushering in that new era. Opened in October 2021, Zwirner’s new Manhattan outpost, named after its address, 52 Walker, is set to function differently from the art giant's other locations and is poised to foster creative experimentation while supporting a broad range of artists. 

Featuring a renovation overseen by Selldorf Architects, 52 Walker is situated on the ground floor of a historical landmark building in Tribeca. Its programme is led by director Ebony L Haynes, a respected curator and writer, and will showcase artists of all backgrounds and at various stages of their careers.

52 Walker and the vision of Ebony L Haynes

Its inaugural exhibition, a solo presentation of works by Kandis Williams entitled ‘A Line’, showcases the breadth of the artist’s multidisciplinary practice. Ranging from collage and video works to performance and assemblages, Williams’ works delve into ideas of race, nationalism, authority and eroticism – qualities that are heightened in the gallery context.

As Haynes says, ‘The gallery is built around the idea of giving artists space and time to create and exhibit over an extended timeline. I want artists to feel like they can experiment in this space and that visitors can spend longer moments engaging with the works in an intimate manner. I have been a long-time admirer of all the artists 52 Walker will feature, and all my exhibitions will be grounded in the thoughtful, critical background each artist brings to their work, including the first five exhibitions, which happen to be solo shows: Kandis Wiliams, Nikita Gale, Nora Turato, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, and Tau Lewis.’ 

Haynes’ conceptual and research-based approach has been proven at other galleries, such as Martos Gallery and Shoot the Lobster, and informs her explorations on how to reframe the gallery model. 52 Walker has been envisioned as a platform that blends the commercial gallery with the long-view exhibition development of a kunsthalle. While all the works shown will be for sale, the gallery will notably not represent the artists it presents. 

‘I want to make sure 52 Walker is a place of experimentation for artists. The adapted kunsthalle model enables this by removing the boundaries of representation and ensures that 52 Walker’s featured artists are brought into conversations and opportunities for collaboration with other galleries,’ explains Haynes. ‘I want artists to have exposure to as many opportunities as possible across their careers, with 52 Walker providing an ephemeral space they can inhabit for a time. We are also working in a commercial model, as selling their work affords more opportunities for growth within their practices, creates connections with great collectors and permanent collections of institutions, a place I think they all deserve to be, and many already are.’

Each show will be accompanied by an issue of the gallery's publication Clarion, which will give ‘each artist a monograph archiving their work with scholarly intent’, Haynes continues. ‘This documentation builds on the exhibition, bringing in dialogues with other critical thinkers both in and out of the art world.’

INFORMATION

’Kandis Williams: A Line’, David Zwirner, 52 Walker, New York, until 8 January 2022, davidzwirner.com

With its rich artistic heritage, Belgium is fertile territory for art and design collectors, and two of them – Belgian architect Olivier Dwek and businessman Frédéric Hanrez – recently united to create a stunning new gallery space in Brussels. Called New Hope, it opened its doors during the Brafa Art Fair in January. 

Dwek is a tousle-haired character with a wickedly good eye and the confidence to take a morning Zoom call in his bathrobe. Architect to Belgium’s crème de la crème for the past 20 years, he is still something of a secret beyond the country’s borders (though, with seven Parisian projects under way and the release of a monograph published by Rizzoli, this will soon change). Growing up in a business-focused family, Dwek was an outlier with a passion for art.

He devoured autobiographies of Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, learned to draw nudes at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, then studied architecture at the Institut Victor Horta. He is a collector, too. ‘Art helped me to sharpen my eye,’ he states. At only 28, he was commissioned to refurbish Louis Vuitton’s Brussels store, and in 2000, he founded his own studio, creating light-filled, modernist-inspired homes for well-heeled clients, often curating the art and design within. 

Hanrez is a Belgian entrepreneur as discreet and low-key as Dwek is bold and exuberant. A scion of an illustrious Belgian family with a lifetime passion for collecting, Hanrez realised about 20 years ago that he could get more bang for his buck with design. ‘I prefer to have the best in design, rather than second best in painting,’ he says. Having spent part of his childhood in Wisconsin, he was attracted to the craft spirit of American design, and now owns one of the world’s finest private collections of American 20th-century furniture, notably from New Hope, Pennsylvania.

In 2003, Hanrez inherited a building in central Brussels. Part of a family estate, the building had been turned into a ballroom by his great-great-great grandfather in 1865 to celebrate his 25th wedding anniversary. By the time Hanrez took it over, the ballroom was a ruin. It sat directly across the street from one of Brussels’ most iconic pieces of architecture (and a Unesco World Heritage Site), the former home of art nouveau master Victor Horta, which is now the Horta Museum. In fact, Hanrez says, Horta chose the address because the ballroom was low enough to afford him a view of its splendid garden. When Hanrez asked for a permit to raze the ballroom and construct a new building, the local authorities ordered him not to build any higher, in order to keep Horta’s beloved view intact.

Hanrez commissioned Dwek, a friend, to come up with a new space for what he calls his ‘three-dimensional art’. They tore down the old structure, leaving the street façade, which the authorities also required be left intact. They then searched out extraordinary materials – black lava floor stones from Malta, Swiss-made floor-to-ceiling windows, and black ‘Kolumba’ bricks handmade by family firm Petersen Tegl in Denmark.

New Hope took nearly five years of construction. Though it measures only 550 sq m, it feels larger, thanks to plenty of natural light, a double-height ceiling and multiple levels. Out back, the parallel lines of the awning and patio wall frame the park’s mature trees like a painting.

Graphic black and white tones provide a neutral backdrop for the collections, with a dramatic dash of colour from a massive green marble wall. Dwek meticulously selected the stones so that the veins would create a mirror effect, like a two-way Rorschach inkblot (the green wall also makes a nod to Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion).

Overlapping stone steps to a raised ground-floor level create a flowing effect, like flat rocks in a stream. A skylight is supported by black steel beams that Dwek compares to the legs of a Jean Prouvé table. The black lava flooring extends beyond the sliding glass wall to the patio, creating continuity inside and out. ‘There is no difference between architecture and interior architecture,’ insists Dwek, noting that predecessors such as Horta and Mies van der Rohe would not have dreamt of doing a building’s envelope and leaving the interior to someone else.

Standing in the garden, he points out the parallels between New Hope and the Horta house rising behind it: rooftops that are peaked on the left and lower on the right, three vertical windows on one side, bay windows on the other.

Hanrez is using the gallery to host temporary exhibitions, often in dialogue with his own collection, which is rich in pieces by Americans (George Nakashima, Phillip Lloyd Powell, Paul Evans and Sam Maloof ) and Belgians (Ado Chale and Jules Wabbes), as well as rare Scandinavian design. ‘I’m trying to keep this space dynamic so that people come,’ says Hanrez. ‘They know something will be happening here, and it’s always different.’

For the images on these pages (and in his new book), Dwek filled New Hope with works from Hanrez’s holdings and two other major Belgium-based collections. Hanrez’s American masterpieces, including an elaborately sculpted bronze cabinet by Paul Evans, shared the space with furniture by the likes of Jean Royère and Alexandre Noll from the collection of Frenchman Daniel Lebard, another low-profile figure. ‘He denies it, but he is the world’s biggest collector of French furniture from the 1950s,’ Dwek says. On the walls, Dwek put artwork by Richard Prince, Richard Serra and Philip Guston, all belonging to the collection of his friend Charles Riva.

Including New Hope, three of the nine buildings that Dwek selected for the book are foundations or centres for art, and he is keen to design more. ‘There aren’t many architects who know how to do it well,’ he says. ‘A piece of artwork releases vibes into the atmosphere – positive, negative, happy, sad. Architecture plays an enormous role when it can make those vibes resonate.’ 

INFORMATION

New Hope, 26-28 Rue Américaine, Brussels

Olivier Dwek: In the Light of Modernity, $65, published by Rizzoli

rizzoliusa.com 

A version of this article appears in the November 2021 issue of Wallpaper* (W*271) on newsstands and available to subscribers.

Pace Gallery has unveiled its new London home at 5 Hanover Square with inaugural shows by New York-based artist Torkwase Dyson and late abstract expressionist legend Mark Rothko. 

Dyson’s Liquid a Place will serve as a dynamic inaugural offering for the gallery. On view from 8 October –  6 November, coinciding with Frieze Week 2021, the multi-media installation transforms one of the new gallery spaces with sculptures, activated by a site-specific sound piece.

The artist, self-described as a painter across different media, grapples with how space is perceived and negotiated, particularly by Black and Brown bodies. On 7, 9 and 11 October as part of Pace Live, Dyson’s installation becomes a stage for leading writers, poets, dancers and musicians, selected by the artist, to engage with issues of environmental racism, spatial liberation and sensoria. 

‘Working in London offers me the opportunity to lengthen my questions around human geography. This history/timeline of carving the earth, the construction of the canals and all the mechanistic infrastructure and architecture connected to it. And the River Thames’ history of docks and dispossession,’ says Dyson. ‘What is systemic world building? How do we separate planetary world building and issues of climate change and relationship/difference to the Western construction of the universal that flattens and disappears people? When I continue my research in the space it simply also opens up space to hold liberation strategies and recognise autonomy/self-possession.’

Elsewhere in the gallery, Mark Rothko’s ‘1968: Clearing Away’, offers a show of rarely seen paintings on paper created during the final years of the artist’s life. These works, developed during a time of ill-health and personal troubles for Rothko, mark a shift in scale from his characteristically monumental canvases to smaller works on paper. Though intimate in scale, these works are no less intense, meditative or intoxicating.

The gallery, previously home to Blain Southern, which closed in 2020, has been reimagined by Jamie Fobert Architects, the practice involved with Pace’s original London gallery on Lexington Street. 

Fobert has transformed the interior architecture of the existing building, creating versatile galleries across two floors. The levels will be connected by a new feature staircase rendered in black steel. ‘At the beginning of the project, Pace considered carefully the way gallery spaces should relate to workspaces within the new gallery. This became the generating idea of our work,’ says Fobert. ‘The positioning of volumes and connections, both horizontal and vertical, has created a sense of fluid movement through the building. Art spaces and workspaces are integrated, giving the visitor a continuous dynamic experience.’ *

INFORMATION
Torkwase Dyson: ‘Liquid a Place’. Exhibition: 8 October – 6 November 2021 Performances: October 7, 9, 11, 2021

‘Mark Rothko 1968: Clearing Away’, 8 October – 13 November 2021

 ADDRESS

Pace Gallery
5 Hanover Square
London W1S 1HE

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After Hiroshi Sambuichi’s magnificent 2017 transformation of the existing Cisternerne – an underground exhibition space in Frederiksberg, Denmark – the Japanese architecture master and the venue’s director Astrid la Cour have been working on a new, ambitious plan for the historical site and modern art hub: a permanent extension to the museum’s architecture.

Historical documents have shown a fourth chamber at the Cisternerne site (an underground reservoir system of ancient cisterns, now used to display art), in addition to the three known ones that currently make up the museum. Sambuichi plans to excavate and reveal this newly found space and re-establish a mirrored basin from the mid-1800s on ground level. The basin will be made of glass and work as a transparent roof to this new chamber.

New light-filled chamber for Cisternerne

The sun will fill the underground space with natural light and the lake-turned-ceiling will serve as a pool for children in the summer and a skating rink in the winter. Underneath this water feature, a pond will fill most of the fourth chamber. A large wooden stage and covered gangways will criss-cross the space, creating connections and pathways over the water.

‘For me, this is more than just a beautiful piece of architecture. I want this to serve as inspiration for future sustainable architecture and investigate the effects that a roof made of water will have on the light and the climate of the space,' Sambuichi explains.

Water acts as a natural filter for most of the sun's UV rays and infrared heat, but lets in daylight to the space. How this will affect the plant and animal life in the lower pond is one of the things that Sambuichi hopes to investigate during this building's design and development.

Ventilation and climate control will also be designed as a largely passive, and hence self-sufficient, system. As in Sambuichi’s Inujima Seirensho museum, a tall wind tower will help to circulate cool air around the chamber, minimising the use of more conventional air conditioning and promoting sustainable architecture. 

If realised, the fourth chamber will only enhance the appeal of what is currently one of Europe's most spectacular art venues. Meanwhile, the architecture will pay homage to the relationship between man and nature, explored through this meeting between Sambuichi's sensitive design and the natural elements of sun, wind and water.

INFORMATION

frederiksbergmuseerne.dk

‘We hope that the intimacy and magic of this place are transported to the people who visit,’ says Iwan Wirth about the latest Hauser & Wirth outpost in Menorca, which officially opened to the public on 19 July 2021. The art centre – comprising gallery, education lab, restaurant, gardens and boutique – is located on Isla del Rey (Island of the Kings), a small island in the Mahón harbour that is the site of a grand but crumbling former naval hospital, built in the 18th century by the English.

The property also includes outlying buildings and the archaeological remains of a 6th-century basilica. Visitors arrive at this unique setting by boat (five euros for a return ticket), and are greeted by a candy-pink oblong Franz West sculpture – a cheeky statement that sets the mood for this exciting new art destination. 

Heritage, preservation and experimentation

For years now, Hauser & Wirth has been dedicated to renovating old architectural gems, beginning with their revitalisation of the Löwenbräu brewery building in Zurich in 1996 and cemented with the Somerset art centre in 2014. But in terms of its location and heritage, the Menorca project takes this passion to the next level. ‘We could not have picked a more complicated place to build an art gallery’, says Wirth. ‘It is highly protected, covered with rocks, there was no electricity, let alone the logistics of being on its own island.’

Menorca and the Isla del Rey are protected UNESCO Biosphere sites, and the naval hospital, which is across the way from the gallery, is currently undergoing its own renovations thanks to a team of volunteers who began their passion project in 2004 to repair parts of the building and record its fascinating history. 

Where local traditions meet global curiosity 

‘We have a curiosity or an appetite for unusual sites. We are constantly searching for places and spaces, but particularly for places which can be inspiring for the artists we work with, because an urban gallery/white cube can be quite limiting. We have to keep it exciting for them and for us.’

For the design, renovation and landscaping, the gallery turned to architect Luis Laplace and landscape designer Piet Oudolf, both of whom worked together on Hauser & Wirth’s Somerset outpost. It is a fruitful collaboration in all senses. Laplace sought to ‘enhance Menorca’ in his designs, to bring the island and its heritage into its own by using as much local, traditional and recycled material along with the island’s strong craft traditions.

Take for example the use of the local mares stone with its soft pinky-beige tones, local and recycled wood, and the handwoven straw lamps that decorate the outdoor space that is both for dining and relaxing. ‘The lamps were actually woven by a teenage boy from the island,’ recounts Laplace, who happened to see one of them in the back of a local shop. ‘When I asked the owner about the lamps, he said it was his son who made them for fun, a tradition taught to him by his uncle, and they were in fact traps to catch lobster and fish,’ he recounts. But Laplace saw their potential and commissioned the boy to make a series of lamps.

Nautical-inspired details such as blue cording wrapped on the gallery doors, red metal exterior lamps, metal hardware and sinks in the bathroom, and sailing flags that decorate the interior of Cantina, the onsite restaurant, remind visitors of the history of the island and the legacy of the naval hospital.

Laplace intuitively designed the gallery spaces so the entrance is slightly down an exterior walkway and through an open patio, rather than at the beginning of the building, allowing visitors to soak in the landscape en route. It is a subtle yet specific reflection of an experience that is about the outdoors as much as about the art. Louise Bourgeois’ Spider (1994) is installed in the corner of the entry patio and is part of a series of outdoor sculptures placed across the property including Joan Miró’s Pere Ubu and sculptures by Eduardo Chillida, whose solo show is currently on view at the gallery’s Somerset location. 

Hauser & Wirth Menorca’s inaugural exhibition explored uncharted territory 

For Hauser & Wirth Menorca’s inaugural exhibition, titled ‘Masses and Movements’, Los Angeles-based artist, Mark Bradford created a poignant body of work that consisted of a suite of richly layered, abstract canvases, globe sculptures and wall pieces (see W*267). Bradford took inspiration from maps and cartography, particularly the Waldseemüller map from 1507, the first known map to include the name America, and a series of installations about migration and movement made on site with a group of young art students from Menorca. 

The artist arrived a month before the scheduled opening in part to launch Hauser & Wirth’s Education Lab, a central part of the new art centre that will serve both as a space for gallery artists to create and collaborate with local artists and schools, but also be available throughout the year for educational workshops and events.

Hauser & Wirth Menorca: a utopian idea made real

As with community engagement, sustainability has become a core mission of Hauser & Wirth, having recently appointed their first sustainably director for the whole business. In Menorca, sustainable initiatives include the collection of rainwater, energy-efficient climate control, the landscaping by Oudolf, who worked with local plant experts to create a native flora garden that will renew and thrive all year long, and an exciting project to bring a small fleet of solar-powered boats to transport visitors – the first of its kind in the Balearics. In addition, Cantina is run by a local restaurant and vineyard, Binifadet and will focus on local and sustainable food that highlights the island’s culinary strengths. 

In many ways, Hauser & Wirth Menorca feels like a utopian idea about how art can be experiential and engaged with its place, the food, nature, community, and Wirth himself has said as much about this project. It is hard not to fall for the magic and be excited by its potential. An exhibition by American artist Rashid Johnson opens this summer – go for the art, stay for the experience.

INFORMATION
hauserwirth.com

ADDRESS

Plaça de la Constitució, 14
07701 Maó, Illes Balears, Spain

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A residential space has been transformed into a contemporary art gallery in Shenzhen, China. The architects behind it, Da Integrating, worked with the existing structure's bones to compose a clean, white space that is bathed with light and is rich in spatial play; welcome to the KennaXu Gallery. 

Hidden behind mature trees and rich planting, the existing building offered open space, simple geometries and was accessible via a picturesque winding path through architectural gardens. But there was one other reason that gallery owner Kenna Xu chose this particular site for his new venue. Built in the 1990s, the old residential block is part of the neighbourhood where Xu spent his childhood. Setting up the art space here meant he could not only start his new business, but he could also have it rooted in a strong, existing community while pursuing global ambitions. 

The architecture studio took on the challenge of transforming the residential interior into a design suitable for a commercial gallery, carefully considering light, colour and spatial arrangement in its composition. ‘[We] saw the possibility of establishing a deep connection between the gallery and people, nature and the city,’ say the team. 

In order to create transparency and bring in more natural light, the design team carved out large, square glazed openings on the façade. An extension brings the gallery into the garden and vice versa through generous windows and skylights. At the same time, a clean, white, minimalist space inside keeps things not only functional and versatile, but almost ethereal. 

‘The extraordinary, dramatic and immersive multi-sensory experiences reinterpret the possibilities of this gallery space, and make it an enchanting destination that visitors forget to leave,' say the architecture team. ‘The space itself is transformed into a delicate work of art, revealing the unparalleled charm of the contemporary art gallery.’

INFORMATION

daintegrating.com

As blank canvases go, the revitalised spaces of Edinburgh's Fruitmarket Gallery offer more potential than most. The artist responsible for inaugurating the new space is Scottish Turner Prize nominee Karla Black. What she has created is less of a show and more of a full-scale material ambush. 

For ‘Karla Black: Sculptures (2001-2021)’, opening on 7 July, the artist is ‘reimagining a retrospective’ armed with 30 existing sculptures and new commissions that respond directly to the Fruitmarket’s rejuvenated spaces. 

It was summer 2019 when the Edinburgh gallery last welcomed visitors. Some £4.3m, a doubled footprint and a sustainability driven reimagining by Edinburgh-based Reiach and Hall Architects later, and the gallery has once again opened its doors. 

The gallery’s transformation doubles its square footage but also brings the Fruitmarket’s historic building – a former fruit and vegetable warehouse – into active cultural use. In the original structure, the innate rhythms of the rooms and the natural light that floods the upper floor remain intact. 

Continuing the theme of curious past lives, the gallery has also expanded into a second historic warehouse, which most recently housed the Electric Circus nightclub. This steel-framed, brick-lined building maintains its rawness and the architects have opened it out by removing the upper floor, reusing the joists and floorboards rather than bringing in new materials. The resulting space will lend itself to theatre and music, spoken word and visual art exhibitions. 

Black’s show is a lesson in materiality, and these sculptures are constructed from her signatures: cardboard, sugar paper, polystyrene, polythene, Cellophane, Sellotape, glass, mirror, net, Vaseline, plaster powder, powder paint, medicines, cosmetics and thread. The works, both large and small scale, sprawl across brick walls, appear in gallery windows and spill across floors. The existing works set the stage for the pièce de résistance, Waiver For Shade, a major commission Black created within the new warehouse space in the weeks before it opened. 

As Fiona Bradley, director of the Fruitmarket Gallery, says of Black’s show, ‘there is a defiant force to her work – it is demanding and disruptive as well as beautiful and inspiring. It is because of this that we invited her to be the first artist to work in the newly reopened Fruitmarket: we value artistic experimentation and we want her to really challenge the new space.’

The show comes a decade after the Fruitmarket curated Black’s presentation for Scotland in Venice at the 54th International Biennale. But ‘Karla Black: Sculptures (2001–2021) details for a retrospective’ marks their first collaboration on home turf. 

For Black, her materials are not just a means to create, but, when activated, form their own vocabulary. ‘I prioritise material experience over language as a way to understand the world or move through it. And I try to make sculpture that, within itself, accepts the fact that the object is a fallacy – that material in this world is only ever either flying together or flying apart,’ Black says in a new book published to coincide with her show at the Fruitmarket. ‘I use both natural and cultural materials the same, for their physical properties. And I use them to keep hold of what I think art really is – a raw, animal creative moment.’

INFORMATION

’Karla Black: Sculptures (2001–2021) details for a retrospective’, 7 July-21 November 2021, fruitmarket.co.uk

ADDRESS

Fruitmarket Gallery
Market St
Edinburgh, EH1 1DF

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The Manhattan address of 432 Park Avenue might be best known for housing billionaires, its groundbreaking architecture by Rafael Viñoly, or even for the perils of building high into the sky, but it's the building’s newest tenant – recently moved into the ground-floor storefront – that is poised to bring it still greater fame. The international auction house Phillips has made a 35,000 sq ft corner of the building its Manhattan headquarters. Boasting state-of-the-art gallery spaces and a grand auction room, viewing rooms and a VIP mezzanine, the space has been designed by studioMDA to shake up the centuries’ old auction experience.

‘The two key factors for the design concept were driven by maximising visual transparency and creating a high degree of flexibility,’ says studioMDA’s founder Markus Dochantschi. The answer lay in removing a floor to allow views from street level down into a sunken mezzanine, leading on to a subterranean auction room. 

‘By removing the most valuable floor area on the ground level at the corner of 56th Street and Park Avenue, we visually connected the large auction room to the public pedestrian level. We also took the 35,000 sq ft of exhibition space and subdivided it into three main zones, each featuring well-proportioned gallery spaces that can be further subdivided as needed,’ says Dochantschi.

Rather than defer to pre-existing archetypes, Dochantschi says that ‘the Phillips auction house allowed us to draw from the experiences we've had when designing over 250 art fair booths, multiple galleries, and museums.’ 

‘Unlike a gallery or a museum, an auction house needs to be able to change shows frequently, sometimes within 24 hours,’ he adds. ‘The carefully designed ceiling and its lighting system, together with a range of moveable walls, turned the auction house into a highly versatile gallery, while the wood floor and the lighting system elevate it to the level of a museum. The new space allows the visitor to have an uninterrupted journey, from the moment they glimpse into the exhibition space from the street level, to the moment they descend slowly via the escalators. The sunken mezzanine allows an overall view of the main exhibition space and its steps will be turned into seating during auctions, lectures, and events, allowing visitors to rest and reflect, much like an urban piazza or the Spanish Steps in Rome.’

Equipped with fever and visitor density scanners, and a sophisticated HVAC system to promote air purification and a higher fresh-air turnover rate in the gallery and salesroom, the studioMDA-designed space rightly keeps public health and safety in mind. Phillips will continue to host virtual walkthroughs, digital media walks and 4K video broadcasting of auctions. With the grand auction room standing as the only one in Manhattan to be visible from the street, collectors and enthusiasts alike are welcome to experience some of its high octane moments in person. 

 INFORMATION

studiomda.com

There’s a brand new addition to the exceptional modern and contemporary art circuit in the south of France: the Fondation CAB, located in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. The new foundation is an offshoot of the Brussels non-profit art centre of the same name, dedicated to conceptual and minimalist art. CAB’s founder, businessman Hubert Bonnet, was looking for a second address, and fell for this 1950s-era former art gallery with modernist architecture, sensuous white curves and large bay windows.

The French architect Charles Zana renovated the space, adding a travertine reception desk, a bookshop-boutique, four guest rooms, a restaurant, and a lounge where you can flip through art books or just gaze out at artist Richard Long’s circle of white stones in the grass.

The art starts the moment you step through the front door, where Felice Varini has painted an installation of four orange circles. A series of rooms display works from Bonnet’s collection, including Carl Andre, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Donald Judd and Dan Flavin. These are complemented by revolving temporary exhibitions – the opening show, ‘Structures of Radical Will', combines minimalist pieces from the 1960s and 1970s with in situ works by contemporary artists.

Zana added four guest rooms to the foundation, each one unique and furnished with vintage 20th century pieces: a Charlotte Perriand table, Jean Prouvé chairs, an Alvar Aalto lamp, and Le Corbusier headboards that also serve as storage space and room separators. Zana says he worked closely with Bonnet on the design: ‘We imagined guest rooms we would like to stay in if we were in the Côte d’Azur.' The pièce de résistance is a 6mx6m demountable Prouvé house, perched between two koi ponds in the garden. Surprisingly, it is available to rent on booking.com (for about €800 a night).

Guests can take their breakfast in the foundation’s restaurant, the SOL, designed by Zana with benches and an accordion bar in the same creamy travertine used for Rome’s Piazza Navona fountain. On the wall, a Sol LeWitt artwork echoes the grid of the windows, with a view of Cap d’Antibes shimmering in the distance.

INFORMATION

zana.fr

fondationcab.com

‘There are a range of art residencies in the world, in various forms, but very few build a full campus from the ground up,’ says Florian Idenburg, co-founder of New York architecture studio SO-IL. Its latest completion is the Amant Art Campus, for young international private arts organisation Amant, positioned as a flexible research and artistic platform, with campuses in Brooklyn and Tuscany.

The US outpost is about to complete the first phase in an extensive construction project that encompasses spaces for an international artist residency programme, including areas for producing and performing arts. Located in an industrial neighbourhood of East Williamsburg and connected to it via a visual palette that includes brick, concrete and steel, the new Amant Art Campus was conceived as an ‘oasis in this industrial zone’.

SO-IL is well known for its thoughtful, delicate art spaces, which combine clean surfaces that lend themselves to displaying art, with distinct architectural gestures that have identity and character. Previous works include the Kukje Gallery in Seoul (2012), the K11 Art and Cultural Centre in Hong Kong (2017), the Frieze New York art fair tent in 2012 and 2013, and the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art (2016). 

Amant Art Campus is no exception. Providing enough space for artists to concentrate and develop work was crucial, but the complex will also operate a programme of open events. ‘Normally, the public is invited only into the area closest to the street, but here we flipped that,’ says Idenburg. ‘The performance space and bookshop/café can only be reached via an alleyway and courtyard, passing by the studios and offices.’

INFORMATION
so-il.org

amant.org

Created for Brooklyn artist Barry X Ball, this studio in a Greenpoint warehouse conversion is the work of New York architect Andrew Berman. The project provides workspace for a team of 20 and is created to ‘facilitate an artist’s complex creative process and workflow’. 

The space spans three floors within a restructured and renovated 20,000 sq ft warehouse; a utilitarian exterior hints at the complex’s original use. At the same time, it also includes some residential space for the artist to feel at home when long days are required.

Brick, flat and corrugated steel panels, perforated steel panels, glass, and polycarbonate sheets make for a robust structure that feels at home within its urban locale. Everything from delivery handling to storage and creative work is tackled on the generous ground floor, where a selection of studios provide appropriate space for digital imaging, photography, woodworking, hand carving, metalworking, sandblasting and exhibiting.

Meanwhile, upstairs, office, meeting and residential areas allow the artist to remain close to his work day and night, while a planted roof adds a touch of greenery to the composition and the wider neighbourhood.

The worlds of art and industrial spaces often intersect – from the Luma Foundation's site in Arles to Chongqing's city museum, and many more – making architectural conversions primes spaces for hosting, storing, creating and displaying creative work across the world.

INFORMATION

barryxball.com

andrewbermanarchitect.com

The Dia Art Foundation might always be first known for its idyllic premises upstate in Beacon, New York, but now it welcomes a new chapter in New York City with the reopening of its Chelsea foothold following an extensive two-year renovation. Armed with an expanded footprint that brings three of its former buildings together into one cohesive space, the new Dia Chelsea continues the institution’s history of repurposing and revitalising existing buildings. 

Designed by Architecture Research Office (ARO), Dia Chelsea retains the character of the original Chelsea neighbourhood which Dia has been a part of since the 1980s. Coming in at 32,500 sq ft, the gallery not only offers a substantial amount of street-level exhibition space (20,000 sq ft to be exact), but also has the capacity to host public performances and educational programmes (which it will conduct both in person and online). It also sees the return of the celebrated Dia Bookstore to New York City.

With such rare and dramatic environs on hand, Dia Chelsea suitably reopens with two new large-scale commissions by American artist Lucy Raven. Comprising a film Ready Mix (2021), and an installation from her Casters series (2021), the two projects address the formation and depiction of landscapes and civic spaces, specifically of the American West, and use abstraction as a means of giving them a fresh perspective. 

‘Dia’s mission has always been to help artists achieve ambitious projects. In a “post-pandemic” world where funding is scarce, this goal seems more important than ever and we have been expanding our collection and exhibition programme to include a greater breadth of artists,’ shares Dia’s director, Jessica Morgan. ‘The inaugural exhibition of new work by Lucy Raven has stemmed from more than four years of working closely with Raven and the resulting show is an investigation into film, perception, and the mythologies of the American West. In fact, all of the first exhibitions in Dia Chelsea are all with artists who are women, including Camille Norment and Delcy Morelos, which will similarly be the result of many years of collaboration. The approach of long-term conversation and support of artists remains our greatest priority.’

She continues, ‘Having exhibitions on view for extended periods offers the opportunity for long-term engagement; our exhibitions at Dia Chelsea will be on view for around nine months. We have also eliminated the admission fee at Dia Chelsea, so exhibitions will be permanently free to the public like all of our NYC sites. We felt this was incredibly important, both to encourage new visitors from the New York community, and to inspire repeat visits.’

‘We also have a distinct architectural approach in so far as we made a conscious decision with Dia Chelsea to preserve the unique qualities of these industrial buildings and not to build anew,’ she adds. ‘Our architects, ARO, have taken a ‘light touch’ approach to the buildings, retaining the natural light in the single-storey galleries from the skylights, as well as respecting the vernacular of the neighbourhood.’

‘The most challenging aspect of the Dia Chelsea renovation was designing three new facades to create an ensemble of distinct but related buildings,’ share ARO’s Kim Yao and Adam Yarinsky. ‘The design engages the scale and organisation of the internal spaces, addresses the functions of the openings for people and art and expresses the detailing of the brick walls. All of this comes together to present Dia’s identity, which is grounded in the character of the neighbourhood and the qualities of the existing buildings.’

In ARO’s hands, Dia’s legacy of creating exciting dialogues between art and architecture takes a more contemporary turn, particularly against the neighbourhood’s larger backdrop of soaring luxury residences that have sprung up in recent years. ARO’s work on Dia Chelsea is part of a longer-term collaboration, which includes the creation of Dia Soho, a new 2,500 sq ft exhibition space on Wooster Street, the revitalisation of two iconic Walter de Maria works, ‘The New York Earth Room’ (1977) and ‘The Broken Kilometer’ (1979) next door, and the expansion of the lower level at Dia Beacon and its surrounding landscape

‘For Dia (and in all our work) we believe that ‘design-centric’ means being strategic about what design means for Dia in terms of its history and mission and thereby define the role of architecture in the project,’ Yao and Yarinsky explain. ‘All our projects for Dia are connected by the fact that we frame our design approach to support Dia’s mission, which is centred on supporting the artists’ visions. The most visible thread is adapting and renewing the structure, materials, space and daylight of existing buildings (given Dia’s long history of adapting and reusing existing structures). Through this, the design of these buildings has reciprocity with the art.’

Morgan concludes, ‘Dia first established an exhibition space in  Chelsea  in 1987. With the opening of the new Dia Chelsea, I am so happy to finally give us a permanent home in this neighbourhood. It is vital that arts and culture are accessible to all and we are committed to offering an open door to everyone in our New York community and beyond.’ 

INFORMATION

Lucy Raven’s exhibition is on view until January 2022. diaart.org

ADDRESS

537 West 22nd Street
New York 10011

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Kukje Gallery has a proud history of introducing Korean audiences to new art experiences. With last summer’s reopening of its K1 building, which now encompasses exhibition spaces, a café, restaurant, and wellness centre, it is rethinking how and where art should be experienced.

The 1987 building is one of three spaces that Kukje operates in the upscale, leafy enclave of Samcheong-dong. The original structure comprises a glass midsection (with Gehry-esque glass façades) sandwiched between two rectilinear volumes, all of which have undergone a two-year makeover modelled on the concept of a multi-use arts complex.

Local architecture practice Ourstudio was brought on board to refresh the architecture and create the new café and exhibition areas on the ground floor. The idea, which has proven prescient, was to create open spaces throughout the building, with as few dividing walls as possible so that windows, and the greenery outside, are always in view: ‘The interior is closely connected to its outer surroundings, which I believe serves as a relief to people who live in a time of isolation, quarantine, and social distancing. In a post-Covid-19 society, we can really only find solace in art and nature,’ reflects the gallery’s managing director, Bo Young Song. 

Meanwhile, designer Teo Yang, a veteran designer of collectors’ homes and an avid collector himself, was brought on board to transform the rest of the building. The second floor now houses ‘The Restaurant’, with an eclectic seasonal menu that encomposses French-Japanese fusion and Italian cuisines (it also has a small VIP dining room in the basement), while the third floor wellness centre, where membership is by invitation only, includes a private gym, yoga hall and lounge area. 

Works by Kukje’s roster of Korean and international artists are present in every space: visitors can dine under an installation of aluminium venetian blinds (a homage to Sol LeWitt) by Berlin-based Haegue Yang, surrounded by a mural that she created with London design studio OK-RM; meditate in front of a mesmerising circular painting by Ugo Rondinone, or lift weights in front of a digital piece by Julian Opie. There’s a Louise Bourgeois drawing outside the locker rooms and an Elmgreen & Dragset pool sculpture on the terrace. Furniture is a mix of geometric original pieces by Yang, and design icons such Pierre Jeanneret chairs and Serge Mouille wall lighting.

‘I hope the gallery evokes the curated and well-balanced atmosphere of a collector’s home,’ says Yang. ‘Visitors are encouraged to imagine living with the work that’s in front of their eyes, installed in the comfort of their living rooms.’

The relaunched K1 has already been met with a surge of interest from both art world and non-art world visitors, explains Song. ‘We believe that art transcends the visual, and as multidisciplinary integration is becoming increasingly more relevant in all aspects of our world today, it was a necessary step for the gallery to keep up with and even try to move ahead of our times.’

INFORMATION
kukjegallery.com

ADDRESS

Kukje Gallery
54 Samcheong-ro
Jongno-gu, Seoul

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Massimo De Carlo Pièce Unique may be tiny, but it’s ambitious in concept. Located in the Marais, and breaking with the local tradition of hiding top galleries within enclosed courtyards, this first Parisian space of the influential Italian gallerist is scheduled to open to the public on 9 February. Unusually, it will only present a single art piece at a time.

Pièce Unique is ‘small by choice, in favour of the quality of the programme’, says gallerist Massimo De Carlo. ‘Art is always about ideas, never about scale. My desire was to question the true nature of a gallery, challenge the art system, and give artists a possibility to enhance new conversations between their work and the viewers. Its dynamic environment will give me – and more importantly, the artists – the chance to operate in a radically different way from the usual gallery exhibitions.’

The philosophy is echoed in the space’s understated design by Kengo Kuma, who worked hand-in-hand with London-based studio PiM (Maria-Chiara Piccinelli and Maurizio Mucciola). The renowned Japanese architect – whose latest projects include the Japan National Stadium, which international audiences will hopefully get to discover this summer for the Tokyo Olympic Games – was also willing to strip back and switch scales. ‘Our idea was to introduce as little as possible in terms of design elements, so the focus remains on the exhibited artwork,’ says Kuma, showing a respect for heritage that is characteristic of Japanese culture.

De Carlo was drawn to the architect’s reverent approach. ‘I felt the light and elegant Japanese touch of Kengo Kuma would be perfectly consistent with the nature of the project, for which the small detailing and the choice of materials are so important. The relationship we built was very meaningful,’ says De Carlo from Milan, where he has two large gallery spaces.

With Kuma directing the project remotely from Tokyo, his team carefully removed the plaster covering the space’s Lutetian limestone wall and wooden beams, to reveal the surfaces in their weathered beauty. As a calming counterpoint, the floor remains smooth, covered with beige clay and seamlessly connected to the wall by limestone skirting. The façade is a simple glazed vitrine, ‘to recreate the transparency of the shop window and maximise the visibility of the gallery’s interior from the street’, explains the architect. Above the window hangs a rectangular sign with a black frame, its white surface left intentionally blank.

Although the show can be appreciated from the street, perfect for the era of social distancing, it’s worth stepping inside to visit the office area, located just behind the white plywood wall which serves as a backdrop for the art piece on show. There stands a custom reception desk crafted from rough limestone, a piece that Kuma is particularly proud of. It commands the space like a huge block of nougat, sliced smoothly at the top – as if laser-cut – and then sealed with resin. On the left, a minimal and smartly functional shelf was also specially designed by the architect.

The inaugural show of Massimo De Carlo Pièce Unique comprises a new work titled Clay Baby (m.l.) by Kaari Upson, whose work reveals intimate inner worlds and fits perfectly with the gallery’s vision, says De Carlo. As for future shows, ‘experimentation shall always remain at the core of everything that we do, as the best artists always teach us’, he adds.

Photographed in 1989, the original Galerie Pièce Unique in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, with window concept and design by Cy Twombly

INFORMATION

Massimo De Carlo Pièce Unique opens on 9 February 2021 with Kaari Upson’s Clay Baby (m.l.)
57 Rue de Turenne, Paris 3e; @massimodecarlopieceunique

From resurrected churches to roller skating rinks and subterranean reservoirs, we reflect on the past lives, and reincarnations of the world’s most extraordinary contemporary art spaces. Explore the untold history of art.

Von Bartha

Past life: a lighthouse 
Location: Copenhagen

Von Bartha recently became the first international gallery to open a space in Copenhagen. Located at Pasteursvej 8, its distinctive building includes a listed former lighthouse (officially known as Kridttårnet) in the Carlsberg region of the city, developed for the brewer in the 19th century by founder Carl Jacobsen.

Marking its first location outside Switzerland, von Bartha’s new space continues the gallery’s track record of striking architectural transformations, with von Bartha’s original Basel space housed in a former petrol station. The new Copenhagen location comprises 75 square metres of gallery space with an outdoor courtyard for sculpture and was inagurated with group show, ‘An Outline Taking Shape to Become a Profile’.

GES-2 House of Culture, V-A-C Foundation

Past life: a tram power station
Location: Moscow, Russia

V-A-C Foundation’s GES-2 House of Culture, Moscow was one of the most hotly anticipated openings on the 2021 art calendar. Reimagined by Renzo Piano and over a decade in the making, the former power station is located on the Bolotnaya Embankment, a hotbed for industrial redevelopments and stone's throw from the Kremlin. Built between 1904 and 1908 to power the city's tram system, the building was designed in the Russian Revival style by architect Vasili Bashkirov.

Piano’s space is a 41,000 sq m canvas of white and grey, save for the bold blue of the pipework, a hangover from the building’s previous life. GES-2 was founded on the idea of a Soviet House of Culture, and was inaugurated by Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson in December 2021. His performative work, Santa Barbara – A Living Sculpture, is a bold, theatrical piece examining the complex relationship between Russia and the US. 

The Center for Contemporary Art, Tashkent

Past life: a diesel power station
Location: Tashkent, Uzbekistan

The building that now houses The Center for Contemporary Art Tashkent (CCAT) is where electrification of the city began, and where Uzbekistan’s contemporary art landscape is now being regenerated. Designed by architect Wilhelm Heinzelmann in 1912, the facility was a diesel power station operating Tashkent’s first tram line, and Tashkent City Enterprise of Electric Grids following the 1917 Russian Revolution. In 2019, a year after the building transferred to Uzbekistan’s ministry of culture, CCAT became the country's first centre dedicated to modern and contemporary art, which aims to develop contemporary culture throughout Tashkent and Central Asia. Beyond exhibitions, the centre is a hub for performances, cinema screenings, art residencies and seminars. 

Its recent exhibition, 'Dixit Algorizmi' traced the roots of modern-day algorithms to the historic mathematician and Father of Algebra, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwārizmī. Curated by Joseph Grima, the show featured work by artists, musicians, filmographers, architects, designers and theorists.

Public Tobacco Factory

Past life: a tobacco factory
Location: Athens, Greece

Top: Nikos Navridis, Try again. Fail again. Fail better, 2013, courtesy the artist, NEON and Bernier/Eliades Gallery. Installation View ’Portals’, Hellenic Parliament + NEON at the former Public Tobacco Factory. Above: Former Public Tobacco Factory – Hellenic Parliament Library & Printing House (pre-renovation)|

In the 19th century, tobacco served as one of Greece’s most important exports. In Athens, the Public Tobacco Factory, constructed in 1930 to cultivate this coveted crop, has recently been transformed into a stage for world-class international art. ‘The former Public Tobacco Factory building is an iconic structure in the city centre, a symbol of the country’s path to industrialisation and, at the same time, a footprint of its architectural heritage,’ says Elina Kountouri, co-curator of the recent exhibition ‘Portals’ and director of Neon, the non-profit arts organisation founded by collector and entrepreneur Dimitris Daskalopoulos who co-organised the show and renovated the historic building.

Though the story begins with tobacco and ends with world-class contemporary art, the shapeshifting industrial building has demonstrated versatility over its near-century history. It’s done time as a prison, been a Second World War air-raid shelter, housed Romanian refugees, been home to the Greek Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Finance, and its present occupant, the Hellenic Parliament, with which Neon collaborated for ‘Portals’, which includes new commissions by Glenn Ligon, Duro Olowu, Teresa Margolles, Michael Rakowitz, Danh Vō and Chrysanthi Koumianaki. 

Fruitmarket gallery

Past life: a fruit and vegetable market
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland

There’s at least one clue in the name: this Edinburgh art centre was once home to a fruit and vegetable market. The gallery combines two former market buildings: one built in 1889, and one in 1938. The latter was converted into a gallery in the 1970s by John L Patterson, with one part serving as a Scottish Arts Council venue.

The Fruitmarket soon became a hub for the who’s who of 20th-century art, with solo shows by the likes of Richard Hamilton, Frank Stella, Willem de Kooning, Henri Cartier-Bresson and David Hockney. In 2021, the Fruitmarket still finds itself on the cutting edge of contemporary art following a two-year redesign, expansion and refurbishment at the hands of Reiach and Hall Architects. The vast industrial gallery reopened in 2021 with a reimagined retrospective by Turner Prize-nominated artist Karla Black.

MAAT Museum

Past life: A thermal power station
Location: Lisbon, Portugal

On the banks of the River Tagus, Lisbon, there’s a conversation happening between two entirely different buildings. Though a century apart, they do have one thing in common: the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology. 

Built in 1908, Central Tejo was a thermal power station that supplied the entirety of Lisbon with electric power, operating non-stop between 1909 to 1954. The iron and brick-covered building, typical of late 19th-century ‘electricity factories’, draws on a mix of influences, from Art Nouveau to classicism. In 1990, it opened to the public as the Electricity Museum, offering a journey through the history and evolution of electricity production, technological feats in renewables, and the EDP Foundation art collection, dedicated to contemporary Portuguese artists

Also on the industrial EDP Foundation campus, but at the opposite end of the architectural spectrum, is a building housing the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT). Designed by British architecture studio AL_A (Amanda Levete Architects) and opened to the public in 2016, the low-slung structure, comprising 15,000 three-dimensional tiles, can be walked over, under or through, and reflects the institution’s convergence of contemporary art, architecture and technology. Among those who have exhibited at MAAT are Pedro Reyes, Lawrence Weiner, Grada Kilomba and Tomás Saraceno. 

Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art

Past life: A flour mill
Location: Gateshead, UK

On the south bank of the River Tyne in Gateshead sits a former flour mill re-imagined as the UK’s largest contemporary art institution. Completed in 1950, it was built by food giant Rank Hovis to a late-1930s design by architects Gelder and Kitchen. The mill closed in 1981 and lay derelict for over two decades. The idea of Baltic as we know it today was conceived in 1991 when Northern Arts (now Arts Council England North East) announced plans for a ‘major new capital facilities for the Contemporary Visual Arts in Central Tyneside’.

Under the guidance of Baltic’s inaugural director Sune Nordgren, the focus officially shifted from flour to contemporary art. Construction began in 1998 spearheaded by Ellis Williams Architects and comprising six main floors, three mezzanines, and 3000sqm of arts space including studios, a cinema/ lecture space, shop, library, archive and rooftop restaurant. In 1999, there was a pause in construction, during which time the building got its first taste of art. Anish Kapoor was commissioned to create Taratantala, a colossal site-specific artwork, that occupied the vast, void-like space.

Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art opened in 2002. The inaugural exhibition, ‘B.OPEN’, featured work by Chris Burden, Carsten Holler, Julian Opie, Jaume Plensa and Jane & Louise Wilson. Since then, Baltic has launched an artist award, and presented over 226 exhibitions of work by 476 artists of 64 nationalities including Holly Hendry, Judy Chicago, Ryan Gander, Lubaina Himid, Adam Pendleton and Lorna Simpson. 

Wiels

Past life: A brewery
Location: Brussels, Belgium

In 1862, following attempts at trading in baked goods and cloth, the Belgian Wielemans-Ceuppens dynasty ventured into beer. Following rapid expansion and a quest for innovative techniques, the family invested in a brand new flagship brewing hall, one that would become the largest in Europe and a landmark on the Brussels urban landscape. Designed in 1930 by architect Adrien Blomme and praised as a ‘perfect example of modernism’ the striking building (also known as the Blomme building or the Wielemans tower) still brims with traces of its industrial past.

During 2005-2008 renovations, some of the brewery's original operational features were restored, such as copper vats and tiling in the brewing hall. In 2007, the building took on new life as a centre for contemporary art. In addition to 19,000 sq ft of exhibition space, the building hosts an auditorium, studio workshops for artists-in-residence, and a café and bookshop in the titanic brewing hall. Among those who have presented work in this laboratory of contemporary art are Wolfgang Tillmans, Yayoi Kusama, Franz Erhard Walther, Mark Leckey, Luc Tuymans and Rita McBride. 

TJ Boulting

Past life: an ironmongery and sanitaryware manufacturer 
Location: Fitzrovia, London

Originally founded in 1808, furnishing ironmongers TJ Boulting & Sons were responsible for the manufacture of range and stoves alongside gas, electrical, sanitary and hot water engineering. Sited on a corner in the heart of Fitzrovia, its Arts and Crafts building is still inscribed with the original Art Nouveau lettering in gold and green mosaic tiles. The company, which moved into the building in 1903, has something of an intriguing claim to fame, said to have fitted the first flushing loo in Windsor Castle, before the more widely known Thomas Crapper made his mark. 

In 2011, inspired by the building's roots, Gigi Giannuzzi and current director Hannah Watson established TJ Boulting as the new gallery space of publishing house, Trolley which specialises in photography, photojournalism and contemporary art titles. Over the last decade, the gallery has carved a reputation for dynamic shows of emerging and mid-career artists. Previous exhibitions include Dominic Hawgood’s shape-shifting ‘Casting Out The Self v3.1’ and ‘Birth’, curated with Charlotte Jansen.

La Patinoire Royale - Galerie Valérie Bach

Past life: a roller skating rink 
Location: Brussels, Belgium 

This is a gallery with a big claim and quite a few past lives. Constructed in 1877 as Royal Skating, it became one of the world’s first roller skating rinks, in a time when popularity for the recreational sport was at an all-time high. In 1900, roller skate wheels turned into car wheels as the space transformed into a Bugatti garage, and later a weapons depot during World War Two. Built in an ornate Neoclassical style, the building’s facade is punctuated by distinctive circular and arched windows, flooding the interior space with a sea of natural light. In 2015, gallerist Valérie Bach acquired the space, enlisting John-Paul Hermant architects to transform it into a hub for Belgian and international Modern and contemporary art with a focus on kinetic installations and abstraction. The 3,000 sq m internal space, masterminded by Pierre Yovanovitch, has since hosted striking contemporary art interventions by the likes of Joana Vasconcelos, Carlos Cruz-Diez and Martine Feipel and Jean Bechameil. 

KW Institute for Contemporary Art

Past life: a margarine factory
Location: Berlin, Germany 

KW is widely known as a cultivator of radical contemporary art, but one might be less familiar with the unexpected past life of its building. The original Baroque structure was built for residential purposes in 1794 and remains one of the oldest buildings in Berlin’s Auguststraße. Its transverse wing was built in 1877 for industrial use, most recently, as a margarine factory called Berolina Margarinefabrik during the German Democratic Republic era.

In 1991, Klaus Biesenbach, Alexandra Binswanger, Philipp von Doering, Clemens Homburger, and Alfonso Rutigliano saw the potential in this crumbling factory as a platform for provocative avant-garde art. Its global reputation has since been cemented by landmark thematic shows including ‘Berliner Chronik’ (1994); ‘One on One’ (2012/13); ‘Fire and Forget. On Violence (2015)’; and ‘The Making of Husbands: Christina Ramberg in Dialogue’ (2019/2020) and major solo shows by Kader Attia, Ceal Floyer, Carsten Höller, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Petrit Halilaj and Adam Pendleton. To hail the institution's 30th anniversary in 2021, KW hosted a series of new commissions and exhibitions by the likes of Renée Green and Susan Philipsz. Responding directly to the building, artist Sissel Tolaas created a limited-edition soap composed of particles collected at KW.

kw-berlin.de

Pirelli HangarBicocca

Past life: a locomotive factory
Location: Milan, Italy

When it comes to scale, there’s nowhere quite on par with the sheer enormity of Pirelli HangarBicocca. The site once occupied one of the most burgeoning industrial centres in Milan, spearheaded by engineer Ernesto Breda in 1886. This vast complex of factories, which included tyre manufacturing giant Pirelli, produced railway carriages, electric and steam locomotives and was later adapted to manufacture aeroplanes and projectiles during the First World War effort. One factory was HangarBicocca, a gargantuan 15,000 sq m space comprising three main areas.

In 2004, after a decade of neglect, Pirelli transformed the space into a non-profit art foundation staging major annual solo shows and permanent installations. Many indicators of the building’s industrial past are still intact. The 30-metre-high, 9500 m sq Navate, constructed between 1963 and 1965 still has visible traces of the rails used to test locomotives, and now hosts Anselm Kiefer’s monumental permanent installation The Seven Heavenly Palaces, commissioned for the foundation’s opening. There’s no doubt that a space like this takes a particular blend of courage, ambition and vision to fill. Among those who have surmounted the task to jaw-dropping effect are Philippe Parreno, Ragnar Kjartansson, Kishio Suga, Marina Abramović, Joan Jonas and Cerith Wyn Evans. 

Cisternerne

Past life: a subterranean reservoir 
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

If it weren't for the world-class art installations, the uncanny depths of Copenhagen’s Cisternerne might be akin to a cathedral crypt or The Chamber of Secrets. The ex-subterranean reservoir was built from 1856-1859 to improve the water supply to the Danish capital and became defunct in 1933. It was deserted for decades before starting a unexpected new life in 2001 as The Museum of Modern Glass Art. In 2013, it was acquired by the Frederiksberg Museums and has since played host to ambitious annual art installations with globally-renowned contemporary artists. As exhibition backdrops go, there is nowhere quite like the challenges of the Cisternerne. Among those who have stepped up to the task to dizzying effect are Jeppe Hein, Eva Koch, Ingvar Cronhammar, Superflex, architect Hiroshi Sambuichi and most recently, Tomás Saraceno.

E-Werk 

Past life: a coal power station 
Location: Luckenwalde, Germany

The transition from power station to art gallery is a fairly well-trodden path, and though E-Werk may not have the show-stopping scale of Tate Modern or Shanghai’s Power Station of Art, unlike the aforementioned institutions, it still generates power. The building was constructed in 1913 as a coal power plant and shuttered its doors soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall. 30 years later, the space was resurrected by Artist Pablo Wendel and his not-for-profit arts organisation, Performance Electrics, as explored in Wallpaper's October 2019 issue (W*247). E-Werk offers residential programmes, workshops, studio space for artists, exhibitions, and its own, patented power source: Kunststrom (art electricity) harnessed through wood chip-burning machines still compatible with the building’s pre-existing infrastructure - an electric fusion of art and power.

Planta

Past (and present) life: an industrial gravel pit  
Location: Lleida, Spain

An industrial complex on the northern edge of rural Catalonia is perhaps the last place one might expect to stumble across an Anselm Kiefer, or a Bill Viola. But coexisting with the daily buzz of lorries and cranes shuttling around mounds of gravel, are spaces dedicated to site-specific contemporary art. Planta is an innovative project on the intersection of art, science, architecture, and enterprise. It’s managed by Fundació Sorigué, the foundation of the Sorigué Business Group, who, aside from a zest for contemporary art, focus on material science research and sourcing sustainable building materials. Sites include an enormous hangar which plays host to Spanish sculptor Juan Muñoz’s Double Bind (previously exhibited in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall) and an ex-air raid shelter (constructed during the Spanish Civil War) which houses a video installation by Bill Viola. Others who have exhibited in this lunar-like industrial landscape include Tony Cragg, William Kentridge, and a project with Chiharu Shiota is in the pipeline. 

König Galerie – St. Agnes Church

Past life: a brutalist church 
Location: Berlin, Germany 

König Galerie has a track record for tracking down unusual gallery spaces. Their London space was, after all, an underground car park until 2017. But six years before then, they took on the challenge of turning the heritage-listed St. Agnes – a former Catholic church and built in 1967 by German architect and post-war modernist Werner Düttmann – from dilapidated brute into a striking stage for international contemporary art. Sited in the Kreuzberg area of Berlin, St. Agnes comprises a former chapel and nave which were artfully transformed from church to gallery by architect Arno Brandlhuber. Among those who have taken full advantage of the gallery’s light, lofty and utterly monumental proportions are Claudia Comte, Elmgreen & Dragset, Camille Henrot and Katharina Grosse.

Arquipélago

Past life: an alcohol factory
Location: Ribeira Grande, São Miguel, Portugal 

In 2015, a 122-year old industrial volcanic stone and timber building in the town of Ribeira Grande on the Portuguese island São Miguel Island went from alcohol factory, to ‘culture factory’. The building was reborn as the Arquipélago Centre for Contemporary Arts, an interdisciplinary creative hub, at the hands of Portuguese architects Menos é Mais Arquitectos Associados and João Mendes Ribeiro. Located in the middle of the Atlantic, The Azores are known as a portal between Europe and the Americas. The centre takes its name from the nine islands that form the archipelago, and has a mission to ‘observe, stimulate, disseminate’ through a programme of visual art exhibitions, workshops, performances, concerts and artist residencies. Arquipélago is a harmonious, and forward-looking fusion of geography, eras and creative disciplines.

With his studio established just three years ago, Benni Allan's EBBA Architects is one of the ‘youngest' additions to our inspiring London architectural creatives line-up; but what the emerging practice lacks in years, it makes up in style, enthusiasm and a refreshing attitude towards interdisciplinary and innovation. As a result, working at the juncture of architecture, wellbeing and the visual arts, the four-people strong studio already has an international offering and a wealth of ideas within its expanding portfolio. 

The practice has a knack for a cross-disciplinary approach and for this, research plays a key role in each project's design development. ‘At the forefront of the studio’s work is a focus on making spaces that reflect a particular poetic and material ambition that can carry meaning and can have a direct emotional effect on the user. We are driven by a desire to transform experiences in a meaningful way,' says Allan, who prior to founding his independent office was an architect with Niall McLaughlin. 

Launching a virtual art space together with curator Jenn Ellis during the UK's first pandemic wave lockdown in the summer of 2020 is indicative of the bold plans this small but fast-growing set up has for the future. ‘We are not afraid of trying different things and use the process of making to help generate something that is least expected,' says Allan. ‘More recently we have explored the potential of virtual reality as a way of testing the design process. The result of this research has helped to establish a new online platform called AORA, bringing art, architecture, food and wellbeing together, centred around a virtual gallery.' 

AORA was conceived as a digital space to promote mental serenity and wellbeing through the curated intersection of design, sound and art. Drawing on research conducted during the design of a children’s nursery, Allan and his team developed an understanding of the value of discovery in architecture. This led to ideas of spaces that support ‘meditative practices and improve wellbeing'. Notions such as this were explored further and put to the test in AORA's design. The gallery is composed of three rooms – The Hall, The Place, The Path – and each display works and can feature bespoke sounds pieces. 

‘Art, architecture and music have proven health benefits from alleviating pain, improving wellbeing and shortening recovery periods,' say Allan and Ellis of their project, highlighting the relevance of such a space during the pandemic – and beyond. Their joint effort's second exhibition, A Hurrian Meditation, focuses on traditions of storytelling and includes ancient and contemporary works from Rome and the Cyclads, to Singapore and India. Launched this month, the show runs through to the end of the year. 

Architecture practice is infused with learnings from cultural and education environments at this young studio in more ways than one – Allan teaches at the University of Greenwich since 2015, runs workshops as a RIBA Ambassador for schools in east London and is co-chair of the Young Trustees for the Architecture Foundation. These experiences, product design and furniture projects, and AORA, alongside more ‘traditional' architectural commissions help Allan lead an energetic and multi-layered practice that enjoys a challenge. 

‘We believe agency and diversity in architecture needs to be supported in order to create a more fair and sustainable future,' he says. ‘These issues are at the top of our agenda and we believe design can be a solution, through better housing, more accessible and safe public spaces, inspiring and enlightening schools; all of which need to address issues of quality and environmental impact.'

And there's plenty more to come in the near future from EBBA. Work is starting on site with its first public commission, a construction skills centre, for the London Legacy Development Corporation; private residential and warehouse renovations are ongoing; and a number of larger mixed-use housing schemes are currently in development; making 2021 a year to look forward to at this fast-emerging architecture firm.

INFORMATION
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Loyally rooted in the California culture, yet with a pulse on the international conversation, David Kordansky Gallery is expanding with an arts campus at the corner of Edgewood and S. La Brea Avenue in Mid-City. Since its humble beginnings in Chinatown in 2003, followed by two different Culver City homes, the gallery has developed into one of the most dynamic venues for contemporary art in Los Angeles.

The renovation was carried out by Los Angeles-based architect Kulapat Yantrasast and his firm wHY, who also designed the original gallery on site, which opened in 2014. The new complex comprises three structures, joined by a central landscaped courtyard that will allow visitors to flow between the spaces, creating one dynamic art compound where it’s possible to mount a trio of shows simultaneously.

According to Kordansky, ‘the extended campus gives us a range of new possibilities – intimate exhibition space (an alternative to our larger gallery spaces), an exterior courtyard for outdoor sculpture – and when we can gather safely again – screenings, performances, and events, space for photography, additional storage, etc. We've never had this much flexibility for programming before.'

The courtyard provides access to the two new exhibition spaces with natural light flooding each space via a centrally cut portal in the ceiling. ‘Kulapat has an ability to highlight the most curious features of a structure while adding clean, focused lines to accentuate art-viewing experiences,' said Kordansky. ‘He respects art as much as architecture.'

The residential scale and feel of the new arts campus is in tune with the neighborhood. Subtle details soften the space, from coved ceilings to an exterior with a series of monolithic fig-covered site walls that conjure a seamless movement between indoors and outdoors. Dark asphalt bordered with succulent plants and gray gravel create a subdued setting.

Yantrasast drew from the unique aspects of the local art community for inspiration. ‘Many great cultural exchange and art moments in LA happen in wonderful backyards where people feel at home,' he said. ‘The art scenes in LA are very down-to-earth, and personal, and I think the gallery spaces should reflect that, rather than try to appear commercial or corporate.'

The courtyard space is designed with drought resistant planting, gravel and wooden trim by wHY’s Landscape Workshop to provide a contemplative place for visitors, artists as well as gallery staff to enjoy. ‘The courtyard also comes alive as gathering place for openings and many art events, just like a good LA garden,' adds Yantrasast.

Custom wallpaper by Mai-Thu Perret installed in the restroom of David Kordansky Gallery's new wHY-designed exhibition space. Perret's wallpaper was originally designed and printed for her 2007 solo exhibition Land of Crystal at the Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, Netherlands. Courtesy of the artist, wHY, and David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles.

INFORMATION

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davidkordanskygallery.com

A new gallery in Hong Kong marks a welcome shift in the contemporary display aesthetic and style from the usual minimalist white box and austere industrial loft to an elegant, intimate, French maison with dark timber floors, classic moulded wall panels and a sleek central staircase linking 2,000 sq ft over three floors. 

The founders, Dominique de Villepin – the art collector, writer and diplomat who served as French Prime Minister from 2005 to 2007 – and his son Arthur, who has lived in Hong Kong for over a decade, collaborated with local interior designer Louis Chon to create a bright, clean, and modern yet unpretentious space, intended to provide a personal experience for fellow collectors. ‘It was important to us that we did something that feels true and authentic to our family,’ says Arthur.

The inaugural exhibition is equally personal, presenting a collection by the late Chinese-French artist Zao Wou-Ki’s of paintings, Chinese inks, lithographs and dramatic, colourful watercolours. The painter, who was born in Beijing, moved to Paris in 1965 and the exhibition shows works produced from the late 1940s to the early 2000s arranged to highlight his wide range of influences from early figurative works to later abstract pieces. There are several rare paintings and drawings, among them Zao Wou-Ki’s only self-portrait that Dominique serendipitously discovered on the back of another work while reframing it.

There is also a collection of personal photographs of the de Villepin family with Zao Wou-Ki, who was a close family friend, some intriguing African masks bought by Dominique, and vintage furnishings, including a striking sideboard cabinet by Charlotte Perriand and a sinuous 1950’s Italian sofa.

The title of the exhibition – ‘Friendship & Reconciliation’ – reflects the artist’s two lives and cultures as well as his signature blend of Western and Eastern techniques. Now is undoubtedly a challenging time to be opening a gallery, but both father and son agree that the message of friendship and reconciliation has never been more relevant. ‘We want the gallery to be a place for conversation and new perspectives.’ 

INFORMATION

‘Friendship and Reconciliation: Zao Wou-Ki’, until 20 September, Villepin Gallery. villepinart.com

ADDRESS 

Villepin Gallery
53-55 Hollywood Road, Central
Hong Kong

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The 1930s art deco Seattle Asian Art Museum has gained an uplifting modern extension that reconnects the building to its surrounding park – and the museum’s 21st century future. Seattle-based LMN Architects is behind the transformation that seamlessly merges old with new.

Before thinking about the future, however, the first priority for LMN was the restoration of this iconic ‘local treasure’. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the museum was designed by Bebb and Gould in 1933 as the Seattle Art Museum (SAM). When SAM moved to a new Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates-designed building, the Asian Art Museum, dedicated to collections of Japanese, Chinese, Korean and South Asian art, split off and opened up at the original art deco digs in 1994.

The addition of new functions to the museum – such as spaces for education and art conservation – was integral. The answer comes in the form of a minimal glass and sandstone extension, in which visitors will find added exhibition space, a conservation studio, auditorium and community education space.

While distinct in material and design, the modern extension also assimilates with the circulation of the original museum, and its location in the heart of Volunteer Park. A new lobby echoes the existing two art deco lobbies that draw visitors through from the front steps to the exhibitions. Materiality and texture of the interiors create a seamless flow.

The glazed exterior was a way to connect people in the park to the museum, allowing it to become more ‘open and expressive’. ‘Now, everyone in the park can get a sense of what is happening within and the contemporary addition creates new opportunities for serendipitous social interactions inside the museum,’ says LMN's design partner Wendy Pautz.

INFORMATION

seattleartmuseum.org

ADDRESS

Seattle Asian Art Museum
1400 E. Prospect Street
Seattle
Washington 98112
US

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There is a row of small models sitting on the smooth, grey terrazzo bench at artist Monika Sosnowska’s new atelier in Warsaw. It’s surprising that her monumental works – vast brutal collages of welded steel and cast concrete contemplating constructivism and modernism – all start as dainty three-dimensional sketches in wire, cardboard and paper.

Minimal and tidy, her voluminous concrete and glass studio lends itself to pure, undistracted experimentation.

When Sosnowska bought the plot of land neighbouring her home and former studio space, she was seeking more room to work on a larger scale, and the continuation of her pleasant commute through the garden to work. Beyond that, what inspired her was what an empty space could bring to her artistic process.

She picked up the phone and called Basel-based architects Karolina Slawecka and Pawel Krzeminski, whom she had met at Art Basel in 2004, where Slawecka had helped bring one of her artworks to life. She caught them at a good time. It had been two weeks since they decided to leave their respective posts, at Herzog & de Meuron and Atelier Peter Zumthor, to co-found their own studio, Architecture Club.

Swiss precision and first-project pressure meant pushing themselves to the limit to reach the ‘best, most radical’ solution for Sosnowska. It required searching, then re-searching, and thinking, then re-thinking, until the solution was at its most functional, and importantly, most extreme: ‘Just two walls and a slab,’ says Krzeminski.

The 5m by 12m concrete frame, with a steel structure and two glazed façades, may look effortless, but it is the result of a two-year process. All the utilities are hidden in that form, including heating, cooling, an alarm system and acoustic panels. The smooth terrazzo bench levels the atelier up to the street. Light glows from behind the steel I-beam frame that will soon be fitted out with an art crane to suspend and lift heavy works, leaving Sosnowska with a void – the ‘best, most radical’ void – of light-drenched space, filled with undefined artistic potential.

It’s also filled with a custom-made service station and parallel table, both in solid oak. The pieces feel architectural; they ‘belong to the space’. The cuboid station unfolds into a kitchen, storage area and a toilet, while the table hosts a series of models featuring red spikes poking out from a mini polystyrene base.

The design – ‘two walls and a slab’ – was at its most functional, and most extreme

Artist and architects found common ground in model-making. ‘We brought suitcases from Basel filled with different models,’ says Slawecka. And when they arrived, the modelling process continued. They mocked up 1:1 sections of the building façade on site – Krzeminski calls it ‘testing by physical reality’ and there’s even a prototype corner of the building buried somewhere under the studio.

‘Karolina made a beautiful model with Monika. They were cutting cardboard and Plexiglas, and quickly gluing it all together,’ he says. By the time they finished, they had reached the final idea for the space. It captured how light would travel through the building, the roughness of the materials and their industrial references.

The concrete formwork of the walls nods to the coarse timber of early shed-like buildings found in the once-rural suburban neighbourhood. The translucent glass of the street-facing façade, reinforced with gridded wire, blurs outside activity and brings privacy, while the regular glazing to the north reveals the tranquil garden scene with clarity.

The façade was welded on site by the same contractor who works on Sosnowska’s sculptures. ‘It was the natural thing to do. She had the know-how and the people,’ says Slawecka.

It was Sosnowska’s open mind that allowed them to reach the ‘best, most radical’ solution: ‘We discussed details with Monika that we wouldn’t usually discuss with a client. She understands proportions in a beautiful way. Whether you’re designing for one person or 1,000, the principles are the same. It’s the intimacy with the client that becomes more specific when designing for one.’

Slawecka and Krzeminski are well-versed in working on art-related buildings: Slawecka led the LACMA project at Atelier Peter Zumthor; and while at Herzog & de Meuron, the pair worked together on the Tate Modern extension – specifically on its staircase, the spinal chord that shifts from animated public space to rudimentary step-way: ‘The team was stuck, and Jacques and Pierre asked us to work on it for a few months for a bit of freshness,’ says Slawecka.

And fresh they still are. They say they are fairly ‘old’ to be starting their own thing. But as they move through the space, playfully finishing off each other’s sentences, recalling laugh-out-loud anecdotes and off-the-record moments, Slawecka and Krzeminski seem anything but old. In architecture years, they are still young, and with this first project completed, it certainly feels like the start of something. §

As originally featured in the November 2019 issue of Wallpaper* (W*248)

INFORMATION
architectureclub.ch

hauserwirth.com

As creative rivalries go, the contest between Cape Town and two geographically proximate northern cities, Johannesburg and Pretoria, probably constitutes a footnote in any primer on global design. Still, local history does matter in appreciating the Javett Arts Centre at the University of Pretoria (Javett UP), a 4500 sq m art museum in South Africa’s socially dour but architecturally daring administrative capital.

While not explicitly pitched as such, Javett UP reads as a northern riposte to two attention-grabbing private art museums in Cape Town: the Thomas Heatherwick-designed Zeitz MOCAA and Norval Foundation by dhk Architects. Designed by Pieter J. Mathews, of local practice Mathews + Associates Architects, Javett UP straddles a busy arterial road slicing through a university known for its boldly modernist architecture. 

Highlights include two fine examples of Pretoria Regionalism: Karel Jooste’s Aula and Brian Sandrock’s Musaion and Amphitheatre complex, Brazilian-inspired arts buildings from 1958. Like Jooste and Sandrock, Mathews is also a graduate of the University of Pretoria. ‘I am very aware of the heritage and history of the campus, but I am not daunted by it,' says Mathews, whose previous projects include a steel-framed sports pavilion with a dramatically extending roof for a nearby girls’ high school. This is the architect’s first museum project.

Javett UP is a synthesis of two basic forms (a bridge and mountain) and three materials (off-shutter concrete, brick and steel). The faceted concrete mound at the entrance is loosely modelled on Mapungubwe, a hill inhabited by a pre-colonial trading civilisation in northern South Africa. This vault-like structure houses both the Mapungubwe Gold Collection and Barbier-Mueller Collection, a sublime assembly of West African gold pieces.

The public displays are spread across three floors, with additional mezzanine areas easing the hike up seven metres of stairs to the enclosed Bridge Gallery. Interior balconies serve as orientation devices and a large window on the museum’s southern facade overlooks a boys’ school where pioneering artist Walter Battiss once taught. The patterned concrete screens on the western façade are climate-responsive additions intended to absorb afternoon heat. Their randomised patterns are an abstraction of three forms (circle, diamond and cross) used on a popular indigo-dyed cloth known as Shweshwe.

Mathews says his design honours the ‘spirit and honesty of brutalist construction methods,' and also prefers to link its form to a nonpartisan tradition of brutalist architecture in South Africa. His next project is an architectural pavilion for the inaugural Stellenbosch Triennale, which opens in February 2020.

INFORMATION

maaa.co.za

On the seafront of Tallinn, there’s a new neighbourhood emerging. On the site of a former miliary port and shipyard which was closed off to the public for nearly a century, Noblessner has sprung up within just a couple of years. Several contemporary apartment buildings completed last year, one industrial building has been converted into a brewery, and a design store has popped up in another. Rounding off the area with a cultural offering is the new Kai Art Center, which opened last week (20 September).

The art centre is a new home for the formerly nomadic seven-year-old Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center (ECADC), led by director Karin Laansoo. After cropping up internationally at arts festivals and gallery spaces across the world such as the Whitechapel gallery in London and Performa in New York, Laansoo's happy to have found a permanent home for ECADC in which to show four exhibitions per year.

‘It’s a small building,’ Laansoo says of their new digs, ‘but it’s very important for the city. During Soviet times Noblessner was a restricted area, so you couldn’t access the sea, but now people can come here and feel that natural connection with the ocean.' Outside, children are jumping off the edge of the pier and skateboarding across the smooth new paving stones of the public realm. Soon there will be two restaurants opening up on the ground floor of the building. ‘Last year there were no roads in the area. It has been a rapid development.'

The Noblessner area, owned by Estonian shipbuilding company BLRT Grupp – which opened a real estate arm to redevelop the land, features 12 original industrial buildings dating back to the early 20th century. A few have been restored, some are used for pop-up theatres and raves, while a few look dangerously close to collapse, with facades hanging off. The Kai Art Center’s new home is within a two-storey former submarine-making warehouse.

This particular brick and reinforced concrete building was built in 1913 by Danish engineers Christiani & Nielsen. It saw 12 submarines to completion between 1913 and 1917 for the Tsar when Estonia was part of the Russian Empire, and when the country gained independence in 1918 it started being used for shipbuilding, until 2018 when the area started regenerating.

Laansoo describes seeing horses being used to transport heavy submarine parts in archive photographs of the building – yet the architecture reflects the early twentieth century embracing modernity. Slender concrete beams support a gracefully arching roof that spans the whole breadth of the building – leaving a void of 6m high ceilings for the Kai Art Center to play within on the first floor.

‘The same Danish engineers who designed this building also worked on the nearby Seaplane Hangar – when that was built, it was the world’s largest free-standing dome. The concrete structure is really thin, beautiful and avant-garde,’ says Margit Aule, architect and one of the co-founders of KAOS Architects, who was commissioned to renovate the Kai Art Center building.

While architecturally advanced for its time, the building still required a ‘total makeover’ says Aule. ‘In some places you could see through the wall.’ Luckily, KAOS are well versed in the restoration of Estonia’s heritage buildings – and on good terms with the Tallinn Planning Department. Aule describes the whole restoration process as a ‘dialogue’.

‘The company [BLRT Grupp] were looking for an idea for the building for three years. They wanted all the architectural details to be displayed – so it made sense for it to be an exhibition space. It’s an open solution. We divided it with offices at one end, the exhibition space in the middle, then an auditorium at the other end,’ says Margit Aule. Gallery space stretching 450 sq m, an auditorium seating 100, and an office for 16 people including meeting rooms and a kitchen for Kai are planned across the whole first floor.

What the design reveals is that as well as restoration, KAOS is interested in contributing to a contemporary conversation about architecture too. ‘We know how to preserve old buildings, but what we add is always contemporary – we are not replicating,’ says Aule of their work.

The touch is sensitive, but the expression echoes the clarity of the original architects. Balancing functionality with preservation, contemporary divisions float within the architecture. Office cubicles neatly seal off meeting rooms and a bathroom, while new timber and plasterboard walls rise two thirds of the way up the original walls. Heating and ventilation is hidden, yet views of the original factory windows that cast shafts of ‘spectacular’ light into the gallery in the afternoon are left visible.

Additions are discreet, yet not without careful aesthetic consideration. Corner strip lights illuminate the new concrete and steel staircase, echoing the existing industrialism, while the slim concrete beams of the roof have been painted a light grey colour, and layered with acoustic panels to soften the sounds.

Meanwhile other elements have been left admirably in their original state. A huge skylight in the middle of the gallery casts shifting patterns of light into the space throughout the day. One structural wall in one of the offices has been left partially unpainted, revealing layers of patterned and decaying wallpaper.

It's clear that KAOS embrace the old and the new alike. The two founders – both named Margit – are currently working on the remodeling of a 13th century castle in Haapsalu, western Estonia – ‘The medieval period was a long period in Estonia so we have a lot of well preserved stone buildings.’ Here, they are inserting contemporary elements such as new Corten steel staircases and concrete slabbed exhibition spaces into the original architecture.

Their passion for merging the past with the present rings clearer still with Aule’s dream project. An old church just around the corner from their office in the Old Town of Tallinn, a walled medieval settlement protected as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site. ‘There was a fire that left it in ruins,’ Aule says of the church, ‘but in these ruins people started building their own private houses. Part of it is still used as a church and concert space. You couldn’t rebuild it, but thinking about how to solve it would be amazing.’

INFORMATION

kai.center

kaosarhitektid.ee

ADDRESS

Kai Art Center
Peetri 12
10415 Tallinn
Estonia

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With its rows of workers’ cottages, Bauhaus swimming baths, factories and power station, Luckenwalde near Berlin was once a sleepy yet productive suburb in what was then East Germany. Beyond industry, nothing much happened. When the Berlin Wall came down 30 years ago, nothing much became nothing at all. The E-Werk power station closed and became a centre for post-unification reintegration. Locals were educated in labour laws, service culture and home economics, and moved away. Luckenwalde fell into slow decline.

For Stuttgart-born artist Pablo Wendel, Luckenwalde’s proximity to Berlin and its many listed buildings presented an opportunity. In 2017, he purchased the defunct power station through his not-for-profit arts organisation Performance Electrics, and this September will turn it back on. Only this time round, it will be fuelled by wood chips recycled from cable drums instead of coal and will be reborn as a contemporary art centre, offering studio space for artists to rent and an annual exhibition programme.

That Wendel came to own an old power station is no coincidence. For the past five years, he has produced electricity from wind sculptures and guerrilla-style appropriations of electricity supply points using mobile battery packs. Pylonia, the 65m-high pylon he constructed in Stuttgart two years ago, powers his headquarters and two dozen houses in the city and has become an icon of rebellion. E-Werk, with 10,000 sq m of empty space and potential to become a functioning power station, proved irresistible to Wendel. The 39-year-old artist’s CV and his patented Kunststrom (art electricity) impressed the former owner of E-Werk, who, keen for it to benefit the local community, sold it, fully renovated, at a discount.

Wendel developed woodchip-burning machines that are compatible with the power station’s pre-existing mechanics. ‘At first, people were sceptical, but Kunststrom has moved far beyond an idea. We forget to talk about how much energy is needed to make art, how much energy museums use through lighting, cleaning, conservation and transport. They spend much more of their budget on this than they do on young artists. I’m offering art as a power supply.’ Wendel also stocks his studio in E-Werk with welding kits, milling machines, lathes and drills, which resident artists can access.

For the September opening, entitled Power Night, Wendel will roam among the labyrinth of pipes, ladders and furnaces that make up the power station’s engine room, filming as he goes. His journey will be projected on a screen to an audience in E-Werk’s Turbine Hall. In two of the three galleries, artist Nicolas Deshayes will exhibit Thames Water, a series of sculptures made of pipes through which water, heated on site, will flow. Artist Lucy Joyce created flags and photographed locals brandishing them in key spots near E-Werk. These images will go on show in Gallery 3 and the artworks will be displayed at the building’s front entrance. London’s Block Universe is bringing a roster of performance artists to the Turbine Hall and the Stadtbad (Bauhaus swimming baths) next door.

In the grounds, an 18m geodesic dome by Stuttgart architecture collective Umschichten will host events. It’s the first of five pavilions that Wendel and Helen Turner, his co-artistic director and life partner, have planned as part of the year-long E-Pavilion architecture series. Next up, next year, are structures by German designer Samuel Treindl and students from Berlin’s Universität der Künste.

‘I’ve always been interested in ephemeral art, self-destroying sculptures,’ says Wendel, who studied sculpture at London’s Royal College of Art. ‘But I struggled to make a living from non-commercial art, so I decided to industrialise myself, to set up an autonomous infrastructure. Now I can use art to power the washing machine.’ Turner, who left her position as chief curator at the UK’s Cass Sculpture Foundation to run E-Werk, adds: ‘Pablo can solve any problem with his hands.’

Initially, about a quarter of the plant will be in use, producing enough energy to power 200 Luckenwalde households. Leftover heat produced through the pyrolysis system will feed back into its eco-system to heat the space and, in future, power an agricultural programme that includes a brewery, a coffee roasting facility, aquaponic fish cultures and vertical farming.

E-Werk’s eight studios were snapped up by artists who are being priced out of Berlin. ‘There are so many artists there, it’s crazy,’ says Wendel, who had no idea where he’d go when his team of five outgrew his Stuttgart studio. ‘I came to Luckenwalde to view the Stadtbad as a studio space, then heard about E-Werk. I never expected to buy a power station!’

‘One day we hope E-Werk will power the whole of Luckenwalde as it used to,’ says Turner. ‘We see huge potential for cultural regeneration through its listed buildings beyond the Stadtbad and Hutfabrik [the 1920s hat factory designed by the German expressionist Erich Mendelsohn]. We would love to activate these buildings, too.’ 

As originally featured in the October 2019 issue of Wallpaper* (W*247) – on newsstands now

INFORMATION

kunststrom.com

ADDRESS

73 Rudolf-Breitscheid-Strasse
Luckenwalde

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Arter, the new, monumental contemporary gallery space in Istanbul’s Dolapdere district, is something of an optical illusion. For it is difficult to tear one’s eyes away. In the midst of the fourth biggest city in the world, a sprawling warren of cacophonous noise and movement, Arter is like a portal into a parallel universe, or a worm-hole into a very serene and tranquil neighbouring planet.

The gallery, which is designed by London-based firm Grimshaw Architects, is covered with a mosaic of rectangular planes of glass-fiber. They tessellate together, rhomboid-like, in convex and concave shapes, and have been glazed by hand so they resemble the surface of the beautiful ceramics that forms such a part of Turkey’s long and proud artistic heritage. As the sun moves over the Istanbul cityscape, Arter’s façade shimmers with light and shade, mirroring the patterns of the clouds and the movement of the city.

The building is Istanbul’s – and indeed Turkey’s – first home to a permanent collection of contemporary art. This is not a humble beginning. Without an entrance fee, the citizens of Istanbul can now view 1300 works by more than 300 artists, half of which are of Turkish origin, with around 30 per cent from Europe and 20 per cent from the rest of the world. Arter’s collection includes world-renowned luminaries like Joseph Beuys, Geta Bratescu, Mona Hatoum and Sophie Calle. 

Arter has been funded by the Koç family, who, as art patrons the Vehbi Koç Foundation, have acted as sponsors of the Istanbul Biennial for the last 15 years. The opening of this stunning new building marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Foundation.

Arter began life as a subsidiary of the foundation in 2010. But Grimshaw’s significant involvement began as the result of a paid project competition initiated in 2013. The competition was won by Grimshaw, whose design was augmented by contributions by Thornton Tomasetti, Max Fordham and Neill Woodger Acoustics. Construction of the building started in 2015, and opened for the first time alongside the press previews for Istanbul Biennial 2019.

Arter’s new building, which covers six floors and more than 18,000 sq m, is conceived as a versatile ‘series of spaces', says Kirsten Lees of Grimshaw Architects, who describes the building as ‘a complex, engaging totality that changes constantly depending on the viewer’s position, creating a multi-layered, integrated and interdisciplinary public space.' Arter is connected by a central atrium that serves and intersects with six varying galleries and a terrace, which is used for sculptural works. All together, the building has a designated exhibition space of approximately 4,000 sq m. 

Many modern art galleries seem satisfied with a series of adjoining white cube spaces. Yet the design itself has enabled Arter, in its very being, to exhibit the most contemporary of contemporary art as the form cross-pollinates and breeds with other mediums.

Arter thus opens with seven separate exhibitions, four of which are drawn from the collection. ‘What Time Is It?', curated by Emre Baykal and Eda Berkmen, and ‘Words Are Very Unnecessary', curated by Selen Ansen, are both carefully compiled explorations of the permanent collection, loosely based around themes of shared memory, cultural lineage and vernacular history. 

These are joined by a retrospective exhibition of Altan Gürman, the pioneering Turkish artist whose influence has only recently been recognised. Gürman was born in 1935 and graduated from the Department of Painting at the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts as a young man in the late 1950s. Yet he only produced work from 1965 until his untimely death in 1976.

Curated by Başak Doğa Temür, the exhibition brings to light Gürman’s entire oeuvre for the first time. Whilst many of his contemporaries were working on traditional canvases, onto which they carefully applied acrylic and gouache, Gürman incorporated  to his creations various types of metal and wood, barbed wire, thick cardboard and the kind of cellulose paint you might find in heavy industrial processes. Gürman would spray paint onto his workspaces with a pesticide pump.

After his death, Gürman’s works were meticulously preserved by his wife, Bilge. Yet Gürman remained largely undiscovered by the art world. The presentation of his work in such epic surroundings makes, in itself, Arter a worthwhile investment. Close-by, we find a room dedicated to video art, and here we view Rosa Barba's solo presentation ‘The Hidden Conference', which comprises of a three-part film series the artist shot at different museum storage facilities.

‘The building as a complex, engaging totality that changes constantly depending on the viewer’s position, creating a multi-layered, integrated and interdisciplinary public space'

In the building’s bowels, we find two performance halls; Karbon, a ‘blackbox' designed for installation-based performance work, which houses a flexible seating structure for 332, and, thanks to a tension wire grid system, allows sound and light equipment to be suspended from the ceiling. Here, we find Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s ‘Offroad v.2', which, to a deafening abstract soundscape, features three grand pianos that, quite by themselves, drift and interact at various speeds and angles. They have been programmed, somehow, to respond to the speed and direction of the wind that hits Arter’s exteriors, we are told.

Then there’s the Sevgi Gönül Auditorium, with a telescopic seating system of 168, which is designed to double as both a darkened cinema, an intimate conference space and a chamber for concerts and dance performances. It has a sprung floor, while wall panels transform into seamless mirrors. Arter’s cinema programme will kick off with a retrospective on director Jonas Mekas.

‘Arter’s varied programme offers opportunities to foster and create new synergies between art forms, while providing a focus for physical and intellectual interaction and the creation of innovative creative communities,' Lees says. If one needs an escape in Istanbul, Arter is indeed a portal to another world.

INFORMATION

grimshaw.global

The Kennedy Center celebrates the opening of its $250 million expansion, the REACH, with a 16-day festival of music, dance, and performing arts events starting this weekend. The REACH — an acronym made up of aspirational verbs: renew, experience, activate, create, and honour — adds 72,000 sq ft of interior space within and below 4.6 acres of landscape, all of which audiences and performers will activate, board members of the Kennedy Center hope, with their arrival on 7 September.

Designed by a team comprising Steven Holl Architects (SHA), BNIM, and Hollander Design Landscape Architects, the expansion rises triumphantly from the irregular leftover space between the Potomac and the highway that crosses it in an area formerly dedicated to the original 1971 Edward Durrell Stone building’s garage entry and bus parking. With the metaphor of an iceberg in mind, three white pavilions float above the new, artificial ground plane as the triangles to Stone’s bombastic timpani. These pavilions connect below ground to the larger mass of flexible rehearsal and performance spaces spread over two levels. Along the western edge of the expansion, thick glazing affords river views to the multi-use studios while limiting outdoor noise. Parking is still a consideration, but now one that is tucked out of sight beneath an undulating green roof of reflecting pools, lawn, and a Ginkgo grove.

If only the same consideration were applied to the knot of highway infrastructure surrounding the site. The opening festival promises roughly one thousand artists in more than 500 events, many of which will be outdoor performances, and the future possibility of shows being live-streamed and projected onto the exterior of one of the pavilions has also been floated. But it’s hard to imagine those experiences not being drowned out by the near-constant din of automotive and airplane traffic overhead.

These are, of course, conditions the design team has done its best to mitigate. In terms of outdoor treatments, the pavilions also eschew parallel surfaces, with the largest, dubbed the Skylight Pavilion, featuring a concave concrete wall footed by curving glass. The Ginkgo grove attempts to buffer the lawn from roadway noise, and a reflecting pool offers further noise dampening through sound absorption.

SHA partner Chris McVoy describes the outdoor space as surprisingly quiet given the movement around the site. ‘It's situated, in section, in an ideal acoustic zone', he says. ‘We’re below the onramp to the Memorial Bridge, so that there's no direct line of hearing from the wheels of cars, and we’re above the traffic on the parkway.' Simulcasts, he explains, will be screened on the northern side of the Skylight Pavilion, thus using that structure itself as an acoustic barrier between audiences and traffic on the Memorial Bridge to the south. The River Pavilion likewise shields the lower lawn from parkway traffic noise, and in many places, the landscape gently rises up the outside of the pavilions, in what McVoy terms ‘sedum swoops', that soften hard surfaces.

On the interior, the team’s efforts include invention of a new material application, ‘crinkle concrete’, that performs both acoustically and structurally. Based upon the principle of reducing parallel planes and developed in-house at SHA by Garrick Ambrose with acoustician David Harvey, the technique for creating crinkle concrete involves pounding thin sheet metal until it becomes a surface of high-relief dents and mounds, then coating it in rubber to serve as the textured formwork for in situ concrete pours. In addition to that visible acoustic treatment, the combination of low-velocity forced-air handling and radiant floors connected to an extensive geothermal well system promises noiseless temperature control.

One of the firm’s fascinations has long been the interplay of architecture and light, and, for a building whose bulk is underground, the REACH succeeds admirably at channeling daylight below. The window walls on the west side of the lower levels admit plenty of natural light, and in the studios that line this edge, the textured concrete is also tinted white to further reflect light into the space. Where the pavilions rise, they also funnel light downward; a strategic triangular skylight brightens a back staircase. ‘We take rehearsal space, and we make it a beautiful space to be, with great views and great light', McVoy says. ‘The artists are in there eight hours a day sometimes. And so to see the course of the day change through the light is really inspiring.'

While the artists rehearsing will undoubtedly see benefit to practicing in such bright spaces, visitors can also enjoy them, thanks to an ambulatory that offers mezzanine views into the studios below.  

To address the Kennedy Center’s relative isolation, tucked as it is beside a highway interchange and the self-contained Watergate complex, the designers employed a more overt metaphor, that of a literal reach across Rock Creek Parkway in bridge form, to invite pedestrians and cyclists into the Center from the waterside promenade. With a decidedly informal – and pointedly public – layout, the REACH attempts to overwrite any notions of cultural elitism that may have fomented in the Kennedy Center’s last five decades, to promote outreach and openness into the next generation in what the architects consider a living memorial honouring John F. Kennedy.

INFORMATION

stevenholl.com

The Aranya Gold Coast in Qinhuangdao, China is an established resort within the Asian tourist market and a well known port town in the northern province of Hebei. So when enlightened developer Aranya asked Neri&Hu to design an art centre for their seaside community, the Shanghai-based duo jumped at the opportunity. 

The brief felt a fairly straightforward one – a space for art within the resort to cater for residents and visitors. At the same time, ‘Aranya, as a community has a strong emphasis on the spiritual nature of their lifestyle ideology, an oneness with the environment', explain the architects, so their design had to incorporate all those elements and draw on the community's overall direction and context. 

With that in mind, Neri & Hu went on to create a calming structure out of textured concrete, based on the simple box-style volume with a central courtyard – a space for both the residents to meet, sit and relax, and for the art to feature at the heart of the scheme. Referencing the region's seaside location and the water's calming influence, the courtyard houses a water feature, which reveals a stepped gathering space when drained.

Apart from the exhibition galleries, the centre offers a café, a multi-purpose gallery for events and an outdoor amphitheatre, as well as an accessible roof with 360-degree views. 

'It was exciting for us to work with Aranya on this project where we were able to explore a hybrid typology which combined design, art, and performance', say Neri and Hu. ‘The project pushes the boundaries of how architectural space deals with sensorial experiences in unexpected ways.'

INFORMATION

For more information visit the Neri&Hu website

If you walk through a set of revolving doors on the corner of York Avenue and 72nd Street in Manhattan, and look across a recently-renovated white-walled ground-floor gallery space, you’ll come face-to-canvas with William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s painting La Jeunesse de Bacchus. It is, according to Sotheby’s, ‘an icon of French academic painting and the largest work of the artist’s career', and is estimated to go to auction for between $25 and $35 million.

It’s just one of a series of artworks currently displayed and directly accessible to the public for the first time at the recently-renovated Sotheby’s auction house. Sensitively reworked by OMA’s New York team, led by Shohei Shigematsu, the emphasis, says Shigematsu, was on a ‘diversity' of room types. Rather than go for the blank long expanse of wall favoured by museums, Shigematsu and team went for an astonishing number of smaller rooms of various types, layouts, and scales – including white cube, enfilade, corridor, cascade, octagonal, and L-shaped, as well as a few double-height ones.

That diversity leads to a Wrightian sense of constant expansion and compression, tension and relief, as the visitor moves from Rothko to Picasso, to Monet, to Bacon, to Krasner. Scattered throughout are massive concrete columns that, rather than detract, only add to the sense of history so embedded in this thoroughly modern renovation.

‘In conceiving the ideal dimensions of the rooms, it didn’t really match the column grid that the building originally had,' Shigematsu says. At first, then, OMA tried to hide the columns ‘because columns in galleries are known to be an evil thing to do.' Eventually, history won, and the team decided to keep the columns and see them as characters – so ‘you can see the patchwork of the history and the layers of activity that have happened in this building.' 

INFORMATION

For more information visit the OMA website