Art and Urbanism

Chris Burden's Metropolis
02/09 | Catlin Moore

A concurrent homage to the past and future of the conurbation, Chris Burden's Metropolis II (2011) alludes to no one specific region. The Eiffel Tower hugs a familiar Gehry-like building, which is adjacent to a geometric tower like those in Singapore or Dubai—but the automotive hub echoes the stressful, frenetic nature of the artist's own locality.

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Mark Bradford's Urban Landscapes
02/02 | Nicci Yin

Few artists have used mapping as an artistic practice to the effect that Mark Bradford has, weaving the visual and social landscapes of urban societies into the layers of his collage paintings. These paintings, along with works in sculpture and video, will be displayed at a joint exhibition held by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts beginning February 18. This exhibition is a traveling survey of Bradford’s work organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts.

The Braddock Story
01/12 | Alexandra Kleiman

LaToya Ruby Frazier, a recent graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program, explores the ground between self-portraiture and social documentary, using her work – primarily photographic - to cut through the inter-generational gaps in her family. She uses her camera to probe into her family members’ relationships and experience (herself included) and the de-industrialized, toxic city of Braddock.

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The Sociology of Towers
01/10 | Alexandra Kleiman

From Babel to the Burj Khalifa, towers serve as potent sites of collective memory and symbols of cultural change. The Syrian-born American artist Diana Al-Hadid, now living and working in Brooklyn, creates primarily architectural sculptures that oscillate between rigid modernist construction and slumping ancient forms. Al-Hadid’s works evoke structures from the Roman Coliseum to The Monument to the Third International and the World Trade Center.

Romancing the Ruin: Cyprien Gaillard in Conversation
11/23 | Timothée Chaillou

With a nod to Diderot’s dictum that one “must ruin a palace to create an object of interest,” Cyprien Gaillard’s multi-faceted oeuvre is an elaborate homage to entropy. As Gaillard himself once succinctly put it: “I’m interested in things failing, in the beauty of failure, and the fall in general.” His penchant for failure has garnered him not a little amount of success. In this interview, Timothée Chaillou speaks with the artist about failed utopias, anachronisms, sanctioned vandalism, and man-made structures reclaimed by nature, all recurrent themes in his work.

Interview: Finding Stillness through Art and Urban Studies
09/15 | David van der Leer

Last week we asked you to submit questions for Guggenheim architecture and urban studies curator David van der Leer in conjunction with the opening of the Lower Manhattan edition of stillspotting nyc, which runs September 15–18 and 22-25. The two-year project calls on architects, artists, and composers to create “stillspots” throughout the five boroughs, and this time around, legendary Estonian composer Arvo Pärt has collaborated with architecture firm Snøhetta, the designers of the museum pavilion at the World Trade Center site.

Ask the Curator: The Guggenheim's stillspotting nyc
09/06

Where do people find moments of stillness in cities? David van der Leer, the Guggenheim’s Assistant Curator of Architecture and Urban Studies, organized stillspotting nyc, a two-year project that calls on architects, artists, and composers to create “stillspots” throughout the five boroughs. Artist Pedro Reyes opened the first in June, a clinic in downtown Brooklyn that concocted tongue-in-cheek therapy sessions from bits of hypnotism, corporate coaching, and Fluxus. With the second edition of stillspotting opening in Lower Manhattan September 15–18 and 22-25, Artlog invites you to pose questions for our upcoming Q&A with Van der Leer. Two thoughtful participants will receive tickets to #stillspottingnyc (valued at $20).

Not Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim
08/08 | Laura Gonzalez

Nestled between two old, graffiti-strewn brick buildings at the corner of 2nd Avenue and Houston Street, where the East Village borders the Lower East Side, passers-by will currently find an odd structure made up of what seems like glossy black scaffolding partially draped in semi-transparent dark screens. Both ends of the building open to the busy, smoggy streets, revealing a malleable interior that can be turned into a movie theater, an exhibition space, and a game room.

Architecture in the Art Gallery
07/14 | Laura Gonzalez

Architecture and fine art have historically been considered as separate categories, in spite of the many skills they share. Both traditionally involve sophisticated draftsmanship and visual acumen, and yet, you are either an architect or an artist. Each discipline has developed across largely different markets, and the viewing public has been taught to appreciate them separately. This explains why it may seem strange to see architectural works—models, sketches, graphic diagrams—displayed in a contemporary art gallery.

Rem Koolhaas
05/09

Over the weekend you may have noticed the New Museum’s white cube space invading a neighboring restaurant supply store. The walls are, appropriately, covered with the work of Rem Koolhaas and his architecture firm OMA, foremost theorists of urban phantasmagoria, Junkspace, and now the paradoxes of preservation.