SHANGRI L.A. Architecture as a State of Flux
curated by Ichiro Irie
Artists:
February 7 – March 27, 2009
ABOUT SHANGRI L.A.
Shangri-La, as normally spelled, refers to a fictional place in the Far East first described in Lost Horizon, a novel by British author James Hilton, and later popularized in a movie by Frank Kapra with the same name. Colloquially, the term Shangri-La has become synonymous with an earthly paradise or utopia, and also with seemingly unattainable dreams or goals, carrying both positive and negative connotations.
The title for the current exhibition, Shangri L.A.: Architecture as a State of Flux, takes its cues from these ideas. The prospects of Los Angeles or any major city really becoming a utopian paradise would seem an unattainable goal, especially in the light of recent economic shifts in Los Angeles, California, the United States, and the world.
Aligned, however, with the overarching program Los Angeles 2019: Almost Utopia, Shangri L.A. deals with the future of architecture in Los Angeles as something much closer to thought, desire, and perhaps science fiction, than one which has a literal corollary, as of yet, in the outside world. The works in Shangri L.A. approaches architecture as something fluid and ephemeral, at times virtual, interactive, recycled and purely cosmetic, building on and dissecting what is already there, exploiting in between spaces, and shifting as needs, values, emotions and desires shift. Instead of trying to rebuild a city from the ground up (which would be an ecological nightmare), perhaps with these strategies one can conceive of transforming, some day, the urban landscape as acts of transgression by individuals and small groups, within one’s own means, and by any means necessary, not unlike an artist deals with a site specific installation.
This exhibition celebrates architects, and non-architects, who make work that serves as visual/structural enhancers and pressure valves which might one day help Los Angeles or a city like it be more fun and less monotonous, more livable and less alienating. Will the end result be utopian or even almost utopian?
As Le Corbusier, the Constructivists, the Bauhaus and Schindler were challenging notions of architecture from the prior century, a new wave of artists and architects are challenging and building upon the innovations of the 20th century. Although some of the assumptions of these historical figures may have proven to be erroneous, the influence of the forms they created, and the ubiquity and triumph of Modernist design and architecture is undeniable. Perhaps ten or a hundred years from today, some of the artists in this exhibition will have a similar influence.
ABOUT ICHIRO IRIE
Born in Tokyo and raised in Los Angeles, Ichiro Irie received his B.F.A. from University of California, Santa Barbara and his M.F.A. from Claremont Graduate University. In 2001, Irie went to Mexico City on a Fulbright fellowship, and has maintained an active relationship with the visual art community in Mexico. Irie has exhibited his work internationally in galleries and museums such as Kyubidou Gallery in Tokyo, Museo Carrillo Gil in Mexico City, and CSW Museum in Warsaw. In 2002, Irie founded the RiM magazine, a contemporary art publication that focuses on art produced in Los Angeles and Mexico City, and has recently celebrated the release of its tenth issue as part of an event hosted by 18th Street Arts Center. He is also the founding member Cacahuates Japoneses, an artist collective whose work has been published in magazines such as Art Asia Pacific, Arte Contexto and Arte al Dia.
ABOUT THE ARTIST FELLOW: MARCOS NOVAK
Marcos Novak is a global nomad, and an artist, theorist, and transarchitect. In 2008, “Transmitting Architecture”, the title of his seminal 1995 essay, became the theme of the XXIII World Congress of the UIA (Union Internationale Des Architectes). Drawing upon architecture, music, and computation, and introducing numerous additional influences from art, science, and technology, his work intentionally defies categorization. He is universally recognized as the pioneer of architecture in cyberspace, of the critical consideration of virtual space as architectural and urban place, and of the use of generative computational composition in architecture and design. He originated several widely recognized concepts, such as “transvergence”, “transarchitectures”, “transmodernity”, “liquid architectures”, “navigable music”, habitable cinema”, “archimusic”, “eversion”, “allogenesis”. His seminal essay “Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace” is included in several anthologies of critical documents of the digital era. His pioneering work “Dancing With The Virtual Dervish: Worlds in Progress”, developed at the Banff Center between 1991-1994 included the world’s first 4-dimensional immersive environments. His current research involves nano~ and bio~ technologies, and explores the hypothesis that we are in a cultural phase characterized by “the Production of the Alien”.
He has participated in many international exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world, including the 9th Mostra Internazionale di Architettura di Biennale di Venezia in 2004, and the 7th Mostra Internazionale di Architettura di Biennale di Venezia, in 2000, where he represented Greece.
He is a Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is affiliated with CNSI (the California NanoSystems Institute), MAT (Media Art and Technology), and Art. He named the UCSB AlloSphere (the three-story high sphere for the creation of immersive virtual environments, the largest such facility in the world originally proposed by Dr. Kuchera-Morin) and created its first project. He is the Director of the transLAB at UCSB.
www.mat.ucsb.edu/~marcos/Centrifuge_Site/MainFrameSet.html
Anibal Catalan: Anibal Catalan, from Mexico City, is trained as an architect at University of Anahuac, and as a visual artist at the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Printmaking in Mexico City. Catalan works in painting, drawing and installation as a continuation of the space-sculpting and space-creating discipline he aquired during his architectural training.
Catalan has exhibited his work internationally in events and venues such as the Rufino Tamayo Painting Biennial at the Tamayo Museum, Mexico City, the Moscow International Biennial of Young Art at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, and the Castellon Expanded Painting exhibition at the Castellon Museum of Art, Spain. Locally, Shangri L.A. represents Catalan’s sixth exhibition in California and his fourth in Los Angeles having shown at Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, and Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles.
Debbie Hu Ricks received her bachelors degree in architecture at University of Southern California. Aside from her education in architecture, she has spent several years working in the film industry. Hu Ricks work involves the construction of a hypothetical dwelling which exists as an intervention of layered accumulations of urban residue.
CEDAR MILLER
Cedar Miller is a self taught painter and sculptor living and working in Los Angeles. He has shown his work at Verve Gallery and Perrell Fine Art Gallery in Los Angeles, and Night Light Gallery and Fifth Avenue Gallery in Portland.
Infranatural was started in 2004 by Jenna Didier and Oliver Hess as their design partnership that works with embedded technology systems like machine vision, artificial intelligence and networked systems to generate real space and time phenomena in the public realm. Our approach to public sculpture recontextualizes vernacular civic architecture forms as foundations for free form expression – taking cues from the environmental, cultural, and historic factors preexisting at a site.
infranatural is a design team that pulls together members to collaborate on projects. The members of the team are selected depending on the skills and experience needed for each project.
MARCOS LUTYENS, DANIELA FROGHERI AND FERNANDO MENESES
Marcos Lutyens and Frogheri_Meneses Architects are collaborating on Mutual Assured Architectures. Frogheri and Lutyens have worked on two projects in the past, one of which involved a psychological assessment of the city of Cagliari, Italy and culminated in a show at the iMage festival, Firenze, Italy (also involving the collaboration of Oliver Hess and Eric Lozano and curated by Marco Brizzi). The other project, called Mindbrowse, involved a charting of 28 individual “experience-sites” in Frogheri’s mind. These sites were outputted as small stereo-lithography sculptures and shown at “Hugely Tiny” in Pasadena, California curated by Richard Amromin.
Frogheri_Meneses have been working on generative architecture projects and Lutyens on work that explores the extension of the nervous system out into our surroundings.
Frogheri_Meneses are based in Barcelona, Spain and Lutyens in Los Angeles, US.
The architecture office of Oyler Wu Collaborative was established in 2001 by Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu in New York City and is currently located in Los Angeles, CA. Oyler received a BArch from Kansas State University and March from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Jenny Wu received her BA from Columbia University and also received her Master of Architecture from Harvard University GSD. They are the principals of Oyler Wu Collaborative, an architecture firm that believes in creating a dialogue between context and intervention that has the ability to operate at multiple scales and through varying physical and conceptual relationships.
Oyler Wu Collaborative’s scope of projects ranges from small design interventions to a 15–story mixed use tower in Tapei, Taiwan. Oyler Wu Collaborative was recently awarded the design of the new space for the LA Forum for Art and Architecture in Hollywood, CA and is one of the 100 firms selected to participate in the Ordos 100 project in Inner Mongolia, China.
James Rojas: Native Angelino James Rojas is a planning advocate who currently serves as a project manager for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, were he funds pedestrian and transportation enhancement projects. Prior to joining the MTA in 1997, he worked as a planner with the City of Santa Monica.
Mr. Rojas interest in urban issues stems in part from his experiences living in Europe, first in Germany and Italy where he spent four years with the U.S. Army. Later, he served in the Peace Corps for three years in Budapest, Hungary organizing eastern European non-government organizations (NGOs) work on sustainable transportation.
James Rojas is one of the few nationally recognized urban planners to examine U.S. Latino cultural influences on urban design. He holds a Master of City Planning and a Master of Science of Architecture Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His influential thesis on the Latino built environment has been widely cited. For the past 14 years Mr. Rojas has lectured extensively at universities, planning conferences, secondary schools, and grassroots community meetings on the impact of Latino populations on land use and transportation.
Growing out of his research and writing on Latino land use, Mr. Rojas founded the Latino Urban Forum (LUF) in Los Angeles, dedicated to understanding and improving the built environment of Latino communities. LUF has recruited successful professionals to lend their knowledge and influence to innovate and address the issues of the underserved, and often underprivileged, Latino communities of Los Angeles. To date, over 300 volunteer architects, urban planners, public administrators, and lawyers have led the LUF to develop strategies and to provide technical expertise on numerous critical infrastructure and land-use issues in the Latino community. LUF publishes a weekly calendar of cultural and planning activities for over 700 national academic and media organizations, in addition to scores of local community organizers.
A resident of the historic downtown Los Angeles, Mr. Rojas recently organized the Downtown Residents Association and founded the innovative Gallery 727, a leading downtown art gallery dedicated to highlighting and documenting LAs urban landscape to new audiences.
Chris Tallon: Chris Tallon is a visual artist with a background in architecture having received his BFA with honors at the University of Florida, and having attended the MFA program at the UCLA Department of Architecture. He was a founding member of the artist collective Kudzu, and the artist run space the Latch gallery in Los Angeles.
Tallon has exhibited individually at Mark Moore Gallery, Los Angeles, and Steven Wolf Gallery, San Francisco. Recently, his work has won second prize at the Los Angeles Juried Exhibition at the Barnsdall Art Park.
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