Candid Arts Trust: 3 Torrens Street, London, EC1V 1NQ
Opening Hours: Daily 12 – 6pm
19 – 28 August 2011
The divide between art and architecture is the theme of Candid Arts’ latest group exhibition, which promotes dialogue between the two disciplines in order to attempt to bridge the gap between them. One of the major triumphs of this show is that it seamlessly achieves the fusion of the divide, leading the viewer to question whether there is such a division after all.
Art and architecture are fused here by a blurring of the boundary which allows us to step back and see them as siblings who are genetically related but orphaned by practicalities. Michelle-Marie Letelier’s A Machine Too Big to Operate betrays an architectural concern to represent space at such a level of detail that one gains a sense of what it could be like to live with it. Catrina Stewart’s endlessly fascinating models invite contemplation of the possibility of radical urban space through a blaze of colour and intricate detail. Gabriela Fabrowska presents photographs of roofs with the series It is Hard to be Down When You are Up, giving a glimpse of an often unseen dimension of the city in which discreet exterior spaces are created without apparent purpose beyond their relation to the buildings’ interiors. In these works, space is represented as the contingent possibility of something occurring within formalised parameters.
There is, however, much more to the works than the mere formality of space; an architectural language is articulated with an artistic concern for conveying a certain emotional or psychological depth. The unsettling of perspective and stark metallic finish in J Collingridge’s Empty Underground prints, makes the everyday banality of the Tube a site of fearful reflection. The grim reality of living and working in Dubai as part of the relentless machine of capitalism is shown in Technicolor by Alessandro Costa’s photographs. Here places are represented as more than technical abstractions that began life on a drawing board; they are revealed as the theatre in which the everyday lives of people are played out, revealing an existentially troubling disparity between the aesthetic values of the design of space and the crushing dissatisfaction it produces in the people who inhabit it.
A profound insight into the apparent divide between art and architecture is provided by two works in particular. The site-specific installation, Unsettled Territory by David Tannian, ambles through the middle of the gallery with a seeming precariousness. Its timbers undulate in a fractured line, creating a journey between two points that defines the space without enclosing it, leading one to question the permanence, solidity and clarity to which both art and architecture are supposed to aspire. There is a deceptive simplicity in Maria Lander’s Mirror, which is just a mirror with a rectangle painted on part of its surface. At first sight, it might appear to be obscure or lazy, but once you see the reflection of the living world from multiple angles you begin to realise how the work conveys the fluidity of space. It acts as a TV screen which shows the organic unfolding of human life within the confines of the room, opening up the possibility of events occurring in real time but observed from a removed perspective. Both of these works sit at the intersection of art and architecture by dramatising the interaction between the designed world and its inhabitants.
There is a worry that whilst art produces artefacts that are self-justifying ends in themselves, architecture – in the context of an exhibition – can only fall short by producing things that are a means to an end, such as a master-plan for a city or a drawing of a building. This concern, however, dissolves once you accept that the distinction between art and architecture is largely an artificial one that exists for purely economic purposes. In essence, both are creative exercises which need not be constrained by the notions of means and ends. This is particularly well demonstrated by Omar Ghazal’s meticulous drawings, which present a world so brutal and baffling that the enchanting possibility of it constitutes a work of art in itself, which can also be said for Steven Baumann’s The New London Necropolis. These are more than just drawings of proposals – they are invitations to reconsider reality.
The curators have selected the works in such a way as to suggest a neat answer to the question of how or where architecture and art meet. They both lead the viewer to imagine something – a place, a world, a people, a feeling – that exists beyond the scope of the artefact itself. Whether it is through figuration or abstraction, the works here take the viewer beyond the obvious to demonstrate that whatever pragmatic preoccupations may separate art and architecture, they are both centrally concerned with proposing alternate worlds and ways of living.
