Language and Space : Collaborative Art Exhibition (Part 2)
Our first art exhibition, titled “The Spherical Book” was about the idea of blending language with physical space. The “Book” premise began with a simple question; “What if a book was a sphere?” What would happen to the surrounding world if this traditionally rectangular object containing flat rectangular text was made into something three dimensional?
From there we began writing a manifesto on a hypothetical “discovery” of a spherical book and what that might mean. The four of us, as a collective of architects, thought about this as a spatial problem. What would a bookshelf look like if books were spheres? How would we read it? How would we speak?
This exhibition was our first attempt at answering some of these questions. The site of our show was held in a gallery below an actual library. Beneath “Sibley Dome” an appropriate (spherical) place for some of these questions to be proposed.
The layout of this exhibition was playfully mapped. The sign in the center explaining our Book concept was the epicenter of the orbiting art that faced it. Two animations greeted you at the entry to the exhibit, the first was an introduction to the discovery of the Book. The second was an orbiting animation, or key-map of each drawing on display.
By making “maps” and experimenting with layout of content we wanted to avoid the traditional idea of a “group exhibition.” (Where themes tend to be collaged together based on color, canvas size and even alphabetically.) We played with artwork themes, embedded story-lines, relation to shapes and objects in the gallery, among others. The layout of the exhibit encouraged the visitor to place themselves and their interests according to the four distinct narratives on display.
- Times New Roman
- The Five Senses
- Sixteen Terminal Points
- Of a Predetermined Scale
For more on these artworks, check out our last post, linked here!
Here are a few images from our first show!
The two introductory animations…
This exhibition was our first attempt at finding ways to create art as a collective. In the next posts, we’ll describe more about our story, collective art and move from Ithaca to Berlin. Stay tuned!
For more on art, architecture and our story as a design collective...
Nice, really inspiring :) Great themes!
Thank you!! We'll do our best to keep writing useful and fun posts!
An interesting insight into your exhibition. Thank you for sharing.
Our pleasure! It's great to be able to share our experiences.
interesting concept and show! Congrats on the exhibit!