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RIGHT AND LOWER LEFT: The field chapel dedicated to Swiss Saint Nicholas von der Flüe (1417–1487), known as Brother Klaus, was commissioned by farmer Hermann-Josef Scheidtweiler and his wife Trudel and largely constructed by them, with the help of friends, acquaintances and craftsmen on one of their fields above the village. Photos by Pietro Savorelli. The interior of the chapel room was formed out of 112 tree trunks, which were configured like a tent. In twenty-four working days, layer after layer of concrete, each layer 50 cm thick, was poured and rammed around the tent-like structure. UPPER LEFT: The Art Museum of the Cologne Archdiocese was to be a “living museum”. It shows objects from its own permanent collection ranging from late antiquity to the present: Romanesque sculptures, installations, medieval paintings, “radical paintings”, gothic ciboria and 20th-century objects of daily use are presented in changing juxtapositions. Photos by Helene Binet. The new building in the city centre rises from the ruins of the late gothic Saint Kolumba Church, destroyed in World War II.

RIGHT AND LOWER LEFT: The field chapel dedicated to Swiss Saint Nicholas von der Flüe (1417–1487), known as Brother Klaus, was commissioned by farmer Hermann-Josef Scheidtweiler and his wife Trudel and largely constructed by them, with the help of friends, acquaintances and craftsmen on one of their fields above the village. Photos by Pietro Savorelli. The interior of the chapel room was formed out of 112 tree trunks, which were configured like a tent. In twenty-four working days, layer after layer of concrete, each layer 50 cm thick, was poured and rammed around the tent-like structure. UPPER LEFT: The Art Museum of the Cologne Archdiocese was to be a “living museum”. It shows objects from its own permanent collection ranging from late antiquity to the present: Romanesque sculptures, installations, medieval paintings, “radical paintings”, gothic ciboria and 20th-century objects of daily use are presented in changing juxtapositions. Photos by Helene Binet. The new building in the city centre rises from the ruins of the late gothic Saint Kolumba Church, destroyed in World War II.

From the exhibition text written by Henry Urbach:

Andrew Kudless’s P_Wall, commissioned by SFMOMA for this exhibition and its permanent collection, marks a radical reinvention of the gallery wall. Typically smooth, firm, regular and, by convention, “neutral,” the gallery wall has shed its secondary status to become a protagonist in the space it lines. Made of one hundred fifty cast plaster tiles — individually formed by pouring plaster over nylon stretched atop wooden dowels — the new wall possesses an unmistakable corporeal quality. Bulges and crevices; love handles and cleavage; folds, pockmarks, and creases: these are among the char-acteristics of human skin that come to the fore. Contemporary in its effort to capture dynamic forces in static form, P_Wall nonetheless has its origins in the experiments of earlier, 20th century architects including Antoní Gaudí and Miguel Fisác, both of whom investigated the potential of cast material to yield unique, sensual and, at times, bizarre shapes. P_Wall replaces the modern gallery wall with an unwieldy skin that can only approximate the fleshy enclosure that we, as human beings, inhabit throughout the course of our lives.

MATSYS P-WALL

From the exhibition text written by Henry Urbach:

Andrew Kudless’s P_Wall, commissioned by SFMOMA for this exhibition and its permanent collection, marks a radical reinvention of the gallery wall. Typically smooth, firm, regular and, by convention, “neutral,” the gallery wall has shed its secondary status to become a protagonist in the space it lines. Made of one hundred fifty cast plaster tiles — individually formed by pouring plaster over nylon stretched atop wooden dowels — the new wall possesses an unmistakable corporeal quality. Bulges and crevices; love handles and cleavage; folds, pockmarks, and creases: these are among the char-acteristics of human skin that come to the fore. Contemporary in its effort to capture dynamic forces in static form, P_Wall nonetheless has its origins in the experiments of earlier, 20th century architects including Antoní Gaudí and Miguel Fisác, both of whom investigated the potential of cast material to yield unique, sensual and, at times, bizarre shapes. P_Wall replaces the modern gallery wall with an unwieldy skin that can only approximate the fleshy enclosure that we, as human beings, inhabit throughout the course of our lives.

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Hussein Chalayan was born in 1970 in Nicosia, Cyprus. At age 8 he moved to England and preceded to attend Cen-tral Saint Martins and graduated in 1993, with a collection titled “The Tangent Flows” that sets the style of his latter collections, where he experiments not only with fabrics and patterns but also with the techniques he applies to the fabrics. In “The Tangent Flows” he buried all the clothes in his backyard once they were finished, and dug them up before his end-of-year show (Images 1 & 2). This collection was a rebellion against the contemporary man, whom he believes to be miserable, this feeling is what makes him want to wear rubbish.

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The three sculptures in Urs Fischer’s Untitled (2011) are not reassuring on this score. Soaring dozens of meters into the air is a full-size wax replica of Giambologna’s, Rape of the Sabine Women (1583), (below). A male waxwork in sport jacket and glasses regards the statue from across the gallery, and to the side is an empty office chair—also in wax—in which the man (or perhaps Fischer) might work when he is not visiting art fairs. The artwork, viewer, and chair are not just uncannily convincing replicas; they are candles. Each has a wick that was lit during the opening of the Biennale, and ever since, the three have been dripping, oozing, sagging, and dropping appendages. By and by, artwork, viewer, and “workaday world” will end up ignominious puddles on the Arsenale floor, consumed by time, necessity, and the perversity of Biennales.

JAEUK JUNG

JAEUK JUNGLayers of time are fossilized within the essence of amber... korean designer jaeuk jung draws on the qualities of this natural resin as a solu-tion in which to reflect and preserve the final moments of a decaying object. his ‘amber chair’ ‘fossilizes’ michael thonet’s classic ‘chair no. 14’, enclosing the antique piece of furniture and turning it into a contemporary design object. thus a new chair is presented without removing the past completely, but conserving it.

‘amber chair’ was on show as part of ‘the sav-age mind’ in spazio rossana orlandi duringmilan design week 2010.

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Rachel Whiteread is one of Britain’s leading contemporary sculptors. Born in London in 1963, she studied painting at Brighton Polytechnic and sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art. She shot to public attention in 1993 with her sculpture, “House,” a life-sized replica of the interior of a condemned terraced house in London’s East End which provoked intense public debate until it was eventually demolished in 1994. Over the last decade she has developed a significant international reputation, creating major public works in both Europe and the United States. Her winning proposal for the Holocaust memorial at the Judenplatz in Vienna was one of the most prestigious sculptural commissions in Europe in the 1990s. This piece involved placing the cast interior of a library, including imprints from the books on their shelves, into the centre of the square. It was unveiled in October 2000. She represented the UK at the 1997 Venice Biennale and created “Monument” for the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2001. Her “Water Tower” (1998) was just reinstalled on the roof of the Mu-seum of Modern Art, New York this autumn. She lives and works in London and her work is represented in many private and public collections worldwide.

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STRADDLING THE WORLDS OF FASHION, TECHNOLOGY AND THE BODY. THIS BODY ARCHITECT INVENTS AND BUILDS STRUCTURES AROUND THE BODY THAT RE-SHAPE THE HUMAN SILHOUETTE.Lucy creates provocative and often grotesquely beautiful imagery that suggests a new breed existing in an alternate world.Trained as a classical ballerina and architect her work inherently fascinates with the human body. The media call her inventor, friends call her a trailblazer. Either way, she relies on instinct to evolve an extraordinary visual path that is powerful, primal and uniquely Lucy McRae.Lucy works as a Director, Art Director and Innovation Consultant. She has worked for Nick Knight, Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo, Johan Renck, Bart Hess and Champagne Valentine.

“...Channeling the animal kingdom, to create a complex display ritual. The human form begins to distend, grow fur, sprout gills, signaling a new cycle of evolution...”

LUCY

MCR

AESTRADDLING THE WORLDS OF FASHION, TECHNOLOGY AND THE BODY. THIS BODY ARCHITECT INVENTS AND BUILDS STRUCTURES AROUND THE BODY THAT RE-SHAPE THE HUMAN SILHOUETTE.Lucy creates provocative and often grotesquely beautiful imagery that suggests a new breed existing in an alternate world.Trained as a classical ballerina and architect her work inherently fascinates with the human body. The media call her inventor, friends call her a trailblazer. Either way, she relies on instinct to evolve an extraordinary visual path that is powerful, primal and uniquely Lucy McRae.Lucy works as a Director, Art Director and Innovation Consultant. She has worked for Nick Knight, Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo, Johan Renck, Bart Hess and Champagne Valentine.

“...Channeling the animal kingdom, to create a complex display ritual. The human form begins to distend, grow fur, sprout gills, signaling a new cycle of evolution...”

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The Blur-Building by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro was built in Yverdon-les-Bains, in the most minimalist country of them all, Switzerland. The cloud that made the building was generated by spraying water from the (minimalist) lake through 31,500 nozzles.

“Upon entering the fog mass, visual and acoustic references are erased, leaving only an optical ‘white-out’ and the ‘white-noise’ of pulsing nozzles. Blur is an anti-spectacle. Contrary to immersive environments that strive for high-definition visual fidelity with ever-greater technical virtuosity, Blur is decidedly low-definition: there is nothing to see but our dependence on vision itself”, the architects write on their website.

The Blur-Building by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro was built in Yverdon-les-Bains, in the most minimalist country of them all, Switzerland. The cloud that made the building was generated by spraying water from the (minimalist) lake through 31,500 nozzles.

“Upon entering the fog mass, visual and acoustic references are erased, leaving only an optical ‘white-out’ and the ‘white-noise’ of pulsing nozzles. Blur is an anti-spectacle. Contrary to immersive environments that strive for high-definition visual fidelity with ever-greater technical virtuosity, Blur is decidedly low-definition: there is nothing to see but our dependence on vision itself”, the architects write on their website.

Pia Interlandi is a fashion designer whose work often incorporates death as a scientific and psychological concept. She has a particular interest in textile manipulation and garment transformation, informed by her time in Japan under the instruction of Yoshiki Hishinuma. While studying fashion, she began experimenting with dissolvable fabrics as method of exploring life’s transient qualities.This became the basis of her current PhD study at Melbourne’s RMIT University under the supervision of Dr Pia Ednie-Brown. Entitled ‘Dressing Death: Garments for the Grave’, the doctoral study has evolved into the design of funerary garments and even the dressing of the deceased.Part of this study has involved a residency at Perth’s Symbiotica, where she researched the effects of clothing and tex-tiles on decomposition. Involving rigorous immersion in the rituals associated with preparing the body for interment, garments from this investigation are currently on exhibit at the London Science Museum.

PIA INTERLANDI

Melting Men is a series of art installations from the Minimum Monument project created by Brazilian artist Nele Azevedo. Since 2005, Azevedo has been setting up her Melting Men in various countries around the world. Although originally intended as a critic of the role of monuments in cities, environmentalists around the world are adopting her work as climate change art. We caught up with Nele Azevedo to ask her for a bit more information about her popular art installations.

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DAVID LEATHERBARROW

On Weathering illustrates the complex nature of the architectural project by taking into account its temporality, linking technical problems of maintenance and decay with a focused consideration of their philosophical and ethical implica-tions.

In a clear and direct account supplemented by many photographs commissioned for this book, Mostafavi and Leath-erbarrow examine buildings and other projects from Alberti to Le Corbusier to show that the continual refinishing of the building by natural forces adds to, rather than detracts from, architectural meaning. Their central discovery, that weathering makes the “final” state of the construction necessarily indefinite, challenges the conventional notion of a building’s completeness.

By recognizing the inherent uncertainty and inevitability of weathering and by viewing the concept of weathering as a continuation of the building process rather than as a force antagonistic to it, the authors offer alternative readings of historical constructions and potential beginnings for new architectural projects.

DAVID LEATHERBARROW

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Jackie Nickerson is a photography based visual artist. She was born in Bos-ton, USA and has an international reputation for photographing people and their environments.

In September 2002, Jonathan Cape published ‘FARM’, a book of portraits of farm workers taken all over southern Africa. This was followed by a German edition entitled ‘Leden Mit Der Erde’ published by Frederking and Thaler (2002) and a French edition, ‘Une Autre Afrique’ published by Flammarion (2002). In 2007 SteidlMACK published ‘Faith’ which captures Catholic religious communities in Ireland. This was also published by Steidl in France under the title ‘Fides’.

T SHIRTIN CLASS THIS WEEK WE HAD TO MAKE A GENERAL GRAY JERSEY TSHIRT AND BRAINSTORM WAYS TO BEGINA ‘TRANSFORMATION IN THE TSHIRT TO BE DOCUMENTED OVER THE NEXT TWELVE WEEKS. I’VE COMPILED A LIST OF THE TECHNIQUES I BRAINSTORMED DURING AND AFTER THE CLASS (FEATURED ON THE NEXT PAGE).

I’VE DECIDED TO START MY TSHIRT EXPERIMENT WITH A BIT OF A ‘TRIAL AND ERROR’ TECHNIQUE, WHICH, IFUNSUCCESSFUL I WILL MOST LIKELY CHANGE TO PLANT GROWTH OR SUN DAMAGE. I’M GOING TO TEST IFFREEZING THE TSHIRT AFTER SOAKING IT IN WATER WILL ALLOW IT TO FREEZE SOLID OR GIVE IT ANY SORT OF STIFF HAND AT ALL. IF THIS DOES WORK, I’LL DOCUMENT THE MELTING PROCESS EITHER WITH PHOTOGRAPHS OR FILM. I LIKE THE IDEA OF THE ICE IN THE FABRIC CRACKING WITH PRESSURE OR IF I TRYTO PUT IT ON.

EROSIONGROWTHSPACEDISTORTIONMELTINGTEMPORALEPHEMERALBURNINGCASTINGENCASINGICEWAXABRASIONFOAMLIGHTSWEATHERINGSUN DAMAGEINK (COLOUR)AIRDISSOLVE

I BEGAN THE EXPERIMENT WITH THE FROZEN TSHIRT BY SOAKING THE TSHIRT IN WATER AND PLACING IT STRAIGHT IN THE FREEZER, UNSURE HOW THIS WOULD WORK I CHECKED THE TSHIRT THE NEXT MORNING AND FOUND THIS (PICTURED). A HEAVY SOLID BLOCK OF FROZEN TSHIRT. IT’S ROCK SOLID. THIS WEEKEND I AM GOING TO DO A TIME LAPSE OF IT’S MELTING PROCESS AND WILL POST ON THE BLOG ASAP. I LIKE THE IDEO THAT OVER A PERIOD OF TIME (HOW MUCH TIME, I WILL SOON FIND OUT) THE TSHIRT CAN GO FROM BEING AN UNRECOGNISIBLE SOLID FORM TO MELTING INTO A POTENTIALLY COLD AND WET TSHIRT. IT’LL BE INTERESTING TO SEE HOW THIS EXPERIMENT PANS OUT.

TIME LAPSE SIX HOURS

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SESSION TWO OF OUR FIRST WEEK IN THE TRANSFORM STUDIO INVOLVED A SERIES OF EXERCISES EXPERIMENTING WITH COMBINING DISPARATE MATERIALS IN A NUMBER OF DIFFERENT WAYS. THE INSTRUCTIONS WERE AS FOLLOWS:1. JOIN TWO MATERIALS WITHOUT THE ADDITION OF A THIRD MEMBER TO AID THE JOIN2. USE WATER TO SEE THE EFFECTS ON TWO VERY DIFFERENT MATERIALS3. USE FRICTION AND CRUSHING TO TEST THE EFFECTS ON TWO DISPARATE MATERIALS4. INSERT ONE MATERIAL INTO OPENINGS YOU MAKE IN ANOTHER5. TEST BONDING/APPLIQUE METHODS

TO CARRY OUT THESE EXPERIMENTS I FRAYED AND TIED NOTS, USED WATER, CREATED WEAVES AS A MEANS OF JOINING, MELTED ONE MATERIAL ONTO ANOTHER TO BOND, ETC. ON THE NEXT SPREAD ARE PHOTOS FROM ALL THE EXPERIMENTS. THE LARGE FORMAT PHOTOS ON THIS SPREAD ARE SHOTS FROM MY FAVOURITE METHOD OF JOINING WHICH I’M GOING TO FURTHER INVESTIGATE ON MONDAY. I FRAYED THE EDGES OF THE LINEN UNTIL THEY WERE LONG ENOUGH TO DIVIDE INTO SECTIONS AND THREAD THROUGH THE HOLES IN THE GRIP MAT TO TIE IN PLACE.

This weeks workshop focused on working with ‘disparate materials’. After fiddling around with frayed edges, felting,

melting, knotting inserting (the list goes on and on) for the four hour duration of the class I came to the conclusion

that I most enjoyed working with the idea of fraying edges and then using these new ‘strings’ to attach to holes in the

other material (I used grip mat with already existing holes, but the holes could be applied to any sort of material). I’d

really like to further this into the first session of week two and apply it to the body. I’ve thought about applying it to

all seams of a garment versus applying it to carefully selected seams as to make a feature point out of the technique.

During the workshop I also worked with weaving lightweight cheesecloth into slits in black paper. When subjected to

water, some of the dark ink from the paper ran into the white cloth. Which was an interesting effect. But for me, it

lacked a visual appeal at all stages of the process, so I found it hard to connect to this method in an aesthetic way.

I also wove brown paper and strips of plastic together. It was interesting to see how in certain positions this structure

was very solid and strong, but held on the wrong angle or in an uneven weight distribution it would just fall apart.

Although this didn’t really cover any of the questions we were supposed to respond to in the class, I thought it was

relavent.

I used the industrial felt and using water, detergent and sandpaper attempted to ‘felt’ it onto some of the chiffon I had

in my locker. Some sections bonded much better than others. But overall it didn’t end up with a great deal of aesthetic

appeal either.

I also played around with melting some of the plastic air pocket padding onto chiffon. I really liked the outcome of

this method. It had a really interesting visual and tactile outcome. See more photos on the blog page.