Fuksasism!


(image from: http://archidose.blogspot.com/)

With a name like Massimiliano Fuksas how can you NOT be famous? Amongst yawning audience members at the National Gallery of Canada(possibly due to the low lighting and speaker volume???), Fuksas counteracted with delightfully energetic and poetic musings about his architectural practice. He prepared what seemed like an endless amount of drool-worthy slides highlighting his most prominent projects of his career.

See more, learn more:
http://www.fuksas.it/html/entrada.html

Of particular interest:
Maison des Arts in Bordeaux, France (1992-1995)
New Milan Trade Fair in Pero-Rho (Milan), Italy (2002-2005)

If that's not enough to make you a believer, imagine you've had a national postage stamp made in commemoration of your lifetime achievements and you're not even dead yet, c'mon! You've got to be a pretty damn decent designer to pull that off!

"I love destroying asphalt and maybe you'd like to join the party."

-Richard Register

I smelled garbage at the CCA...



The exhibition currently showing at the Canadian Centre for Architecture(CCA) in Montreal, dealt with sens(ation/uality/ing) of the city. It was an interesting overview of some very unique ideas and approaches to progress the way we interact with our environment. Highlights included projects by Buro Kiefer (Flamigstrasse), Maya Lin ( "Eclipstic" Ice Rink in Grand Rapids) and the photographs of John R Gossage (Triptych 1985).

http://www.buero-kiefer.de/projekte/buero-kiefer.de_projekte.html (Buero Kiefer's Park/Playground)
http://www.metropolismag.com/html/content_0302/lin/ (Maya Lin's Grand Rapids Ice Rink)
http://cca.qc.ca/pages/Niveau3.asp?page=expoempire&lang=eng (Canadian Centre for Architecture)

We also went to see the art of Anselm Kiefer in the travelling exhibition: Heaven and Earth.
http://www.macm.org/en/expositions/16.html


Kiefer's body of work was an extraordinary look at his metaphorical re-creations of emotional, historical, philosophical and mythological relationships in both sculpture and painting.

The most popular and anticipated piece, ‘Buch mit Flügeln’, 1992-1994, ‘(Book with Wings)’, seemed less monumental compared to the more commanding pieces of painting which tended to challenge your personal space due to their immense scale and covert subject matter. Furthermore, the juxtaposition of symbolically traditional materials in his work presented unique relationships between the viewer and work as well as within the imagery contained in the pieces themselves.


A reoccurring and central theme was the 'book' which Kiefer explains:
"The book, the idea of a book or the image of a book, is a symbol of learning, of transmitting knowledge . . . I make my own books to find my way through the old stories.”
Many of Kiefers 'books' were represented in his sculptures. Displayed under glass cabinets, a series of books (approx. 4'x2' in size) made of canvas were layered with what looked like thick black tar. They were mysteriously ambiguous in both context and content and this ambiguity was further empasized by the inability to interact with these objects which we usually engage with.

Overall, I was impressed with the work. It seemed both whimsical and melancholy, surreal and static.

As commented on http://www.zekesgallery.blogspot.com/, I was also surprised to learn that the paintings which involved WWII subject matter, were created as recently as 2004! I'd agree that this subject matter is a bit 'tired' in respect to bringing awareness to the events which occurred at that time but there is still value in exploring these ideas. Like many new artists who use 'old' techniques, subject matter etc. there is an opportunity to re-invent how our preconceptions about these things can be altered in order to set up new ideological relationships and eccentricities.

I wasn't too familiar with his projects prior to the show but since seeing his exhibition it has piqued my interest to learn more about him!

(would be a good start: http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/3791333879/qid=1140904467/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_17_1/701-7813210-3687533)!!!

note (from my roommate): The opening of the Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain exhibited the work of Anselm Kiefer in the main gallery.

Choosing? Don't think

"Here's a suggestion for the next time you need to make a complicated decision: stop thinking," writes Alok Jha in The Guardian. "According to a new study, thinking too hard about a problem leads to poor choices -- difficult decisions are best handled by our unconscious minds." Ap Dijksterhuis, a psychologist at the University of Amsterdam, asked volunteers to pick their favourite car based on four attributes; most picked the car with the most plus points. When he supplied 12 attributes, people could identify the best car only a quarter of the time. "Conscious thinkers were better able to make the best choice among simple products, whereas unconscious thinkers were better able to make the best choice among complex products," he writes in the journal Science. The unconscious mind, he says, does not seem to suffer a capacity limit: "large amounts of information can be integrated into an evaluative summary judgment."

Posted on 22.02.06:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com

You can make an argument for/of anything and in this case....I agree!

Taken from: Fulcrum: an annual of poetry and aesthetics
Poetry and Truth: Indian Poetry in English. no.4 2005

H. Masud Taj was born in 1956 in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh. He was educated in Bombay and in Panchgani (at the same school as Manohar Shetty). He recites poems by hear, in sequence, the recitation a return to an early Urdu tradition; and he has only lately begun to collect his poems in print. He lives in Ottawa and works as an architect and calligrapher.

Note: Taj also teaches at Carleton University School of Architecture.

The Travelling Nonvegetarian

The man who spoke with suitcases
Said wisdom was hydrogen peroxide,
Wore a white wig of fibre optic cables,
And dentures that were pure African ivory.
When he smiled, elephants burst into tears.

The man who spoke with suitcases
Said homing pigeons were edible pagers
And grey parrots that spoke too many languages
Tasted no better than those that were dumb,
And all birds on TV were cyber-tandooris

The man who spoke with suitcases
Said the onion was the final package
That packed the process of packing itself,
Which explained the missing mass of the universe
And the tears onion-peelers and stargazers shed.

The man who spoke with suitcases
Said the banana skin was a continuum of zippers,
And all coconuts were neo-colonials
Smashed on occasions of celebration;
All brown outside, all white within.

The man who spoke with suitcases
Said neckties were nooses, wristwatches handcuffs,
And honest heroes who wore underpants outside
Were neurotics packaged in designer masks
Which they removed only to eat.

The man who spoke with suitcases
Said brinjals were boiled with equine eyeballs,
Applied gold glitter-dust to horses’ eyebrows,
And powder-coated his finger and toe nails.
He ate candle-lit dinners in fireproof stables.

The man who spoke with suitcases
Said hunchbacks were born-again backpackers,
And slim briefcases made of crocodile skins
Were chromium-plated mouths to snap off space
To declare at the last border crossing.

This is what creative architecture students do in their spare time.
A photo of a photo that I bought from a couple students at my school!

pro·cras·ti·nate: v. tr.
2. To postpone or delay needlessly.

http://www.west8.nl/ (West 8 landscape/urban design)
www.oma.nl (Rem Koolhaas)
http://194.185.232.3/ (Renzo Piano)
www.mirallestagliabue.com (Enric Miralles)
www.morphosis.net/

http://www.macba.es/controller.php (Barcelona Contemporary Art Museum)
http://www.cnac-gp.fr/Pompidou/Accueil.nsf/tunnel?OpenForm (Centre Pompidou)

www.cdnarchitect.com/ (Canadian Architect Magazine)
www.ukula.com/ (Music, Fashion, Lifestyle Magazine)
http://www.commarts.com/ (Communication Arts Magazine)
http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/ (Art in America Magazine)

Wow, I really am officially old now...