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Ruins Recycled |
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February 25 - March 26, 2011 |
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Artists:
Raul Ortega Ayala, Lara Almarcegui, Imogen Stidworthy, Edwin
Zwakman |
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Edwin Zwakman, Aquarium I, 2010, c-print, lightbox, 250x350x20 cm Edwin Zwakman, Museumsite, 1993, c-print, plexi, reynobond, 140x95 cm Imogen Stidworthy, (...)Points in a Cloud, 2010, duratrans, 3d laser scan, lightbox, app. 110 x 220 cm Lara Almarcegui, Relocated Houses, Wellington, 2009, digital print on paper, c-print on paper, 60x82 cm and 60x88 cm Raul Ortega Ayala, Babel Fat Tower, 2009, Fat, bones, lights, table (Ikea Billsta), 70 cm height table 74x118 cm
Edwin Zwakman, Aquarium I, 2010, c-print, lightbox, 250x350x20 cm
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AKINCI
is proud to present Ruins recycled, a group show with Lara Almarcegui,
Raul Ortega Ayala, Imogen Stidworthy and Edwin Zwakman.
This exhibition can be considered as a research project with a poetical
approach to the architectural ruin. A ruin is not standing on its own.
It is connected to history and is imbedded in the psychological
processes of the people who have lived loss and distress through wars or
urban changes. Ruins recycled is about the transformation of ruins as
ruins are connected to time and memory, but also to myths, stories and
futuristic models.
Lara Almarcegui’s projects explore the various connections between
architecture and urbanism, focusing on abandoned spaces or structures
that are in the process of being demolished. Her projects and
interventions question the present state of the world of development and
construction, and are designed to instigate a dialogue on the different
elements that make up the ever-changing physical form of our urban
landscapes. In ‘Ruins recycled’ Lara Almarcegui will present her project
of the Relocated Houses, Wellington, 2009.
This art project presents 19 houses for sale at Britton’s Yard, which
have been relocated from various neighbourhoods in Wellington over
recent years. Visiting each of these houses and recounting their
histories offers the opportunity to reflect on the urbanisation,
construction, trans-formation and future of the city of Wellington, New
Zealand. Removed from their original contexts, the houses are caught
between a distant past and their future reinstatement to another site.
Raul Ortega Ayala’s (1973, Mexico) work is the result of immersions into
different environments, which he purposefully seeks to experience
through research or observation for an extended period of time. Ortega
Ayala approaches each subject matter using a certain methodology,
predominantly an ethnographic approach (as a participant observer). He
approaches a context with as little predetermined knowledge of its
‘craft’ as possible and seeks to learn it via taking employment and
training in the field in question, or by means of research. At AKINCI
Ortega Ayala will show a replica of Pieter Brueghel’s (1563) Babel Tower
he made with fat in order to constitute a coherent metaphor of our
times. In general the Tower of Babel can function as the eternal ruin,
symbolizing development, human hubris and decay all at once. The Tower
of Babel built of fat can be seen as a metaphor of transformation. In
Ruins recycled Ortega Ayala will also present his new video work of an
architect, a historian and an archaeologist. E.g. a historian talking in
front of a site of something that happened in that spot, an
archaeologist speaking in front of a building about another building
that used to be in that place and a person walking the artist around a
house talking about people he or she knew…
In her complex audiovisual installations, Imogen Stidworthy (London,
1963) analyses various dimensions of the voice and spoken language, in
particular their social and spatially constructive qualities.
The geographical coordinates 53° 27' 46.67" N, 2° 59' 10.35" W lead us
to 46 Willard Street, Bootle, near Liverpool, UK, a house that was
demolished on August 23, 2010. Imogen Stidworthy pinpoints this moment
when the vernacular collapses, nr. 46 was one of the 165,000 houses
built in the 19th century around the city, that are now earmarked for
demolition as part of a largely invisible economic process with
far-reaching social consequences. A 3D architectural laser scan was made
shortly after the house collapsed, to create a precise topography of the
remains. 53° 27' 46.67" N, 2° 59' 10.35" W. Points in a Cloud shows a
view from the resulting data that focuses on the position of the scanner
itself, indicated by the black area at the centre of the image, which is
the only place it is unable to record or represent. The absence of data
on this spot is identical to the undefined space where the image runs
out at the edges of the frame. The position from which we are looking
now is a point about 8m above the ground, looking back in the direction
of this blind spot from where the scanner generates its simulated gaze -
looking both ways simultaneously in an impossible circuit of
self-reflection.
Edwin Zwakman (1969, The Hague) builds model landscapes, interiors and
buildings and then photographs them with a large format camera. He
constructs fragmentary, make-believe worlds resembling miniature film
sets, with wood, cardboard, plastic, cotton, wool, Perspex and paint.
In the works titled ‘generic utopia’ shown at Ruins recycled, Zwakman
presents photographs taken in model factories in Shanghai and Beijing of
remainders from furniture models, used for Real Estate developers for
the Middle East. These models of chairs and tables of which are piled up
in forgotten corners and drawers of the factories form the ingredients
for the model-houses sold to Dubai and other places in the Middle East.
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