v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Elliott Ripper House

From Christopher Polly site:

The project presents an appropriately simple and direct extrapolation of an existing archetypal form within a sustainably modest footprint. It provides a significantly expanded series of connected interior volumes that harness access to sunlight, ventilation and strengthened links to tree canopies and sky, with extension of key existing materials and finishes to retain some memory of its previous incarnation.

An inserted ground floor open living volume is generated by extension of the original envelope and internal levels to an averaged plan footprint of former lean-to’s, followed by a rear first floor addition that extrudes the previous floor plate and gable-ended roof form over the new ground floor. The cathedral volume is retained within the new first floor room arrangement and an extrapolated ceiling-to-wall junction scribes the wrapped alignment of all element heights, lightly bridged to raked ceiling planes by opalescent polycarbonate - while a generous carved void and open stair vertically expands the relationship between two previously unrelated floors.

Fine steel plate elements contrast rusticated weatherboards and expanses of fixed glass and western red cedar external-face sliding doors & pivot windows offer varying degrees of openness and enclosure to temper light and air, strengthening connections to its setting. Two living spaces reflect contemporary patterns of use to enable separation of adult and children functions when required. The ground floor area provides a ‘day’ space for meals preparation, dining and expansive enjoyment of rear gardens, while the upper living room provides an ‘evening’ space for relaxation, separation from utilities and enjoyment of district views - with an adaptable third bedroom providing flexibility for future use as a study.

Cosgriff House by Christopher Polly Architect

Architect Christopher Polly

Near the High Line

Vallejo Nocturno 2013 -Details from the 10th Floor

Laurie Simmons

Interview at Document Journal of photographer Laurie Simmons:

Stephen—Is there irony in your title for this series, “Love Doll?” It may be generic, but the figure seems forlorn, without love. 

Laurie—No, I rarely go for irony in my work—at least not consciously. When I discovered the sex dolls in Japan I understood that, there, they are called “Love Dolls” as opposed to the American name, “Real Dolls.” They seem more tender and adoptable than their coarse, sleazy, and fake American cousins. It makes sense given the Japanese obsession with anime and manga girls that a real-life embodiment of those characters would appear—though I’ve heard that Love Dolls were created around 30 years ago so men with disabilities could enjoy female companionship…True? I don’t know.

Stephen—Come to think of it, there is enough irony in popular culture! Contradiction may be a better term for what she represents: the impossibility of love…Does her specific cultural—Eurasian—identity have any place in your thinking, a Japanese girl who has been ‘imported’ to Connecticut where you live and work?

Laurie—She is a peculiarly Asian fantasy, exquisite and insanely well sculpted. Before I left for Japan in the summer of 2009, I wished desperately to bring something back that would change my work. I didn’t count on it being the size of a family member; everything around me has become a potential stage. Until I dressed her like a geisha in the final pictures she lived and acted like an American—but sort of like one who had just fallen to earth from another galaxy…

Stephen—I am thinking of mail-order brides and adoption; isn’t there a cultural stereotype in her Asianess?  

Laurie—I was very aware of her Japaneseness when I first got her. She seemed to spring from that culture so completely. I was told there were Love Doll hotels where men could go for the night—for a fee. I ordered her online and picked out her face, hairstyle, eye color and other delicate details. But she assimilated quickly when I bought her clothes and posed her in rooms in Connecticut. So she was adopted in a sense, though I must reiterate the doll is not part of my family. It’s a prop.

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Arthur Peña

attempt 52
2013
canvas, staples, drywall, pine, scorched pine, hydrocal

Perl's Problem with Ai Wei Wei

Vallejo Nocturno 2012- Wei Wei exhibition in DC

From The New Republic, art critic lances Ai Wei Wei's exhibition in DC:

Ai is probably at his best when he works as a designer, considering form in its social aspect. From what one can gather from photographs, the studio that he designed and built for himself in Shanghai—which the authorities bulldozed in 2011—was eloquently straightforward, in a style reminiscent of some of Judd's architectural works, of which Ai is surely aware. In recent years, one of the most attractive aspects of Ai's activity has been his engaging various craftspeople—especially workers in wood and ceramic—to create works that Ai designs but hands over to others to produce, in keeping with tried and true post-Duchampian practice. At times he suggests a Dadaist William Morris, corralling skilled woodworkers to make absurdist constructions out of antique tables, stools, and doors, or overseeing the creation of millions of tiny porcelain sunflower seeds that filled the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in 2010—the seeds evoking the Cultural Revolution, when the Chinese people were said to be sunflowers turning toward Mao even as the seeds themselves provided much needed nourishment.

When Ai, who as a boy lived through the terrors of the Cultural Revolution, dreams up projects for skilled workers, he seems to be designing the monuments for a luxurious utopia, with his Moon Chest (elegant boxes with openings related to the phases of the moon) and Map of China (a construction of salvaged wood from Qing Dynasty temples). He has long been something of a collector, a frequenter of antiques markets in China. And his work often has a curatorial character, the gathering together (or the purposeful distortion or transformation) of found objects, or of objects made to his specifications that he regards in the spirit of Duchamp and his readymades. "My work is always a readymade," Ai has said. Such readymades, he argues, "could be cultural, political, or social, and also it could be art—to make people re-look at what we have done, its original position, to create new possibilities. I always want people to be confused, to be shocked or realize something later."

Whatever the admirable consistency of Ai's stand against the Chinese regime, when it comes to art he is a little too fond of jokes and ironies that have a way of multiplying into inanities. Could it be that the 1,001 Chinese citizens he brought to Documenta were somehow regarded as readymades? And to the objection that nearly everything he has done seems a version of something already done by an American artist—whether his boxes that suggest Judd's boxes, or his ambiguous furniture that suggests Richard Artschwager's furniture, or his piled pieces of steel rebar that bring to mind Robert Morris and Carl Andre—would he reply that this is precisely his point, that the American "original" idea becomes for him a readymade? And when he breaks or otherwise transforms what we are told are genuine antiquities, is this his version of what Duchamp once called a "readymade aided"?

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Oscar Niemeyer Dies at 104

Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who designed some of the 20th Century's most famous modernist buildings, died just before his 105th birthday yesterday.

From The Pritzker Prize Site-Niemeyer's biography:

Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012) was born in the hillside district of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts there. Niemeyer’s architecture, conceived as lyrical sculpture, expands on the principles and innovations of Le Corbusier to become a kind of free-form sculpture.

In 1938-39 he designed the Brazilian Pavilion for the New York World’s Fair in collaboration with Lucio Costa. His celebrated career began to blossom with his involvement with the Ministry of Education and Health (1945) in Rio de Janeiro. Niemeyer’s mentor, Lucio Costa, architect, urban planner, and renowned pioneer of Modern architecture in Brazil, led a group of young architects who collaborated with Le Corbusier to design the building which became a landmark of modern Brazilian architecture. It was while Niemeyer was working on this project that he met the mayor of Brazil's wealthiest state, Juscelino Kubitschek, who would later become President of Brazil. As President, he appointed Niemeyer in 1956 to be the chief architect of Brasilia, the new capital of Brazil, his designs complementing Lucio Costa’s overall plans. The designs for many buildings in Brasilia would occupy much of his time for many years.

"As an architect," he states, "my concern in Brasilia was to find a structural solution that would characterize the city's architecture. So I did my very best in the structures, trying to make them different with their columns narrow, so narrow that the palaces would seem to barely touch the ground. And I set them apart from the facades, creating an empty space through which, as I bent over my work table, I could see myself walking, imagining their forms and the different resulting points of view they would provoke.

Internationally, he collaborated with Le Corbusier again on the design for the United Nations Headquarters (1947-53) in New York, contributing significantly to the siting and final design of the buildings. His own residence (1953) in Rio de Janeiro has become a landmark. In the 1950s, he designed an Aeronautical Research Center near Sao Paulo. In Europe, he undertook an office building for Renault and the Communist Party Headquarters (1965) both in Paris, a cultural centre for Le Havre (1972), and in Italy, the Mondadori Editorial Office (1968) in Milan and the FATA Office Building (1979) in Turin. In Algiers, he designed the Zoological Gardens, the University of Constantine, and the Foreign Office.

"I have always," says Niemeyer, "accepted and respected all other schools of architecture, from the chill and elemental structures of Mies van der Rohe to the imagination and delirium of Gaudi. I must design what pleases me in a way that is naturally linked to my roots and the country of my origin.” Niemeyer continues:

When I started to design the Museum of Modern Art for Niteroi, I already had an idea in mind. An abstract circular form above the landscape, and the site free of other constructions to better emphasize the building. I did not want to repeat the usual solutions of a cylinder above another, but to move in the direction of the design for the Caracas Museum (a design by Niemeyer from 1954), creating a line that would rise with curves and straight lines from the ground up to the roof. The exhibition hall would be surrounded by straight walls—I did not want it glazed—but with exits for the external gallery that would encircle it, integrating it in the magnificent panorama.

As often happens, this solution calling for a central support sustaining only the exhibition room was modified. With the addition of one meter in height on the radial beams, measuring one meter and a half, we would add a new floor, including the 'foyer,' the reception room, the auditorium, work rooms, library and bathrooms. This would result in a more complete and economical project.

My architecture followed the old examples -beauty prevailing over the limitations of the constructive logic. My work proceeded, indifferent to the unavoidable criticism set forth by those who take the trouble to examine the minimum details, so very true of what mediocrity is capable of. It was enough to think of Le Corbusier saying to me once while standing on the ramp of the Congress: `There is invention here'.

Although semi-retired, he still works at the drawing board and welcomes young architects from all over the world. He hopes to instill in them the sensitivity to aesthetics that allowed him to strive for beauty in the manipulation of architectural forms.

According to What?

Vallejo Nocturno 2012- The Exhibition

From The City Paper:

The Hirshhorn Museum’s “Ai Weiwei: According to What?” is the most highly anticipated exhibit to come to Washington in years. The show is a collaboration with Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, where much of this work was shown first; it follows another collaboration with the Mori on the 2006 retrospective of Hiroshi Sugimoto, a partnership that the Hirshhorn’s chief curator, Kerry Brougher, has said made this Washington exhibit of Ai’s work possible. Its development began before Ai’s name rocketed into the headlines when he was incarcerated by Chinese authorities without explanation in 2011. But given the artist’s unusual celebrity and given the source of it, “According to What?” has special resonance. How audiences will view it has a lot to do with the state of relations between Washington and Beijing, and between Beijing and Ai.

Because of that context—and because the artist remains in China, his passport revoked—Ai and Washington turns out to be a surprisingly muted affair. It is a first-rate sculpture exhibit, one that lets the artist’s work stand without a sea of explanatory text. Photographs tell Ai’s life story, from 98 snapshots taken during his decade in New York (1983–1993) to several dozen photos of his life in Beijing. Otherwise, there is little of the explanatory, biographical text that often glues together a retrospective of an artist of Ai’s stature. The Hirshhorn appears to have identified a quiet grace in Ai’s work and built an exhibit to suit. The only problem with this approach—one that, certainly, has resulted in a surpassingly elegant exhibition—is that it ignores the artist’s serious penchant for cacophony, which has earned him legions of fans across the world as well as the enmity of the Chinese government.

The quality of the work in “According to What?”—Ai’s first North American retrospective—can’t be overstated. There is nothing here to rival Ai’s 2010 masterpiece for the Tate Modern, an exhibit of 100 million life-size, hand-crafted, porcelain sunflower seeds. But the same touch is present in “He Xie,” an installation of 3,200 porcelain crabs. Presented in a large circular pile, every one is a precious object, yet they are all virtually indistinguishable. A good deal of Ai’s sculpture plays on the contrast between common subject and precious material, including, at the Hirshhorn, marble sculptures of a hardhat and a security camera. (Two things common in Ai’s life, anyway.)

The Hirshhorn might have been built for this exhibit. The scale of the works suits the museum throughout, from the gorgeous “Teahouse,” an installation of improbable house-like structures, to the harsh and minimal “Straight,” an installation of 38 tons of steel rebar. Even “Forever,” a ring of interlocking bicycle frames, fits in the more social space of the museum’s lobby, where art almost never feels at home.

Not every presentation decision works. One of the museum’s first galleries features two spheroid sculptures, “Divina Proportione” (2006) and “F Size” (2011), both made of huali wood, a favorite Qing dynasty building material. The sculptures take the form of truncated icosahedrons—or Buckyballs, the molecular configuration named after architect Buckminster Fuller, who popularized the geodesic dome. (They kind of look like hollow soccer balls.) Along the floors and walls, the Hirshhorn has mounted dozens of photographic prints of Ai’s most famous work: Beijing’s 2008 Olympic Stadium, which the artist designed with the boutique architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron.

That’s a work that Ai might rather put behind him. Ai denounced the Bird’s Nest stadium and boycotted the Olympics, condemning them as a state tool after authorities pursued a policy of forced relocation to make way for the games. But the connection between the prints and spheres is reasonable enough: In Beijing, Ai runs a small architectural firm, FAKE Design, which has completed projects in Jinhua and Beijing. He would be aware of Fuller’s many contributions to the form and language of architecture; in this gallery, the Hirshhorn has made that connection tangible, if way too busy.

What’s less clear is why Chinese authorities made the decision just this month to shut down FAKE, citing the firm’s failure to reregister for its business license. Nor does the exhibit demonstrate why the state has dogged Ai with charges ranging from tax evasion to bigamy after officials released him from 81 days’ detention in 2011. It doesn’t really explain why the state disappeared him in the first place.

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Vallejo Nocturno 2012-cube cube

Carolyn Salas

Untitled

2012

unraveled canvas, hand dyed

two at 9ft x 5ft

From an interview Salas:

I don’t consciously make the effort for the works to be humorous instead I think they reflect my personality. I am very rooted in the harsh realities of life but love to fantasize; I question my own insecurities, dissect my own inner struggles and rely on humor when I can. My material choice is driven by concept, I choose materials scaffolded with meaning which can be pleasantly interrupted or interpreted many ways, pushing the boundaries of material and concept to a place often times uncomfortable. I like how the awkwardness of a piece or the manipulation of a material very familiar to you can be jarring at the same time. For instance in the piece Stacked, I was thinking about the idea of mummifying a keepsake, questioning what happens as the object is repeated and how the meaning changes through that repetition. I’m interested in how the object loses its initial sentimental quality and becomes essentially a “kitsch” object. The objects both personal and found, placed on top of the ceramic cast quilts than provide another layer; a surrealist effect yet still tactile.

Skycourt House by Keiji Ashizawa Design

From the Comptemporist