SUPERFRONT LA

SUPERFRONT is proud to present OPEN HOUSE | STATE SECRETS, opening July 22

SUPERFRONT LA — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 18:18:11 +0000

OPEN HOUSE | STATE SECRETS opens July 22, 2010 at SUPERFRONT LA in the Pacific Design Center B208.

” – Would anyone like to have a little look down into the secret of how ideals are fabricated on this earth? Who has enough pluck? . . . Come on! Here we have a clear glimpse into this dark workshop.” -Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality

OPEN HOUSE | STATE SECRETS is about the dark side of architecture – ‘architecture’ in both the abstract political use of the term and the literal experience of normative buildings. Conceiving of this exhibition as a laboratory, Farrah Karapetian, Mitch McEwen, and architectural collective Bureau E.A.S.T will accumulate work in SUPERFRONT’s space between July 6th and August 22nd. SUPERFRONT’s space at the Pacific Design Center becomes a studio for the exploration of the parameters of photography, sculpture, mapping, and architecture.

Farrah Karapetian works here on designing new pieces that probe the beholder’s belief in and relationship to photographs as artifacts. In designing Photograph of a Foreclosed House, Flood Plain, and other models of disaster as color fields but around specific recognizable architectural details, Karapetian does not reject illusionism, but rather prizes form over pictorial information as a route to photographic communication. The pieces here are linked formally and psychosocially to much of Karapetian’s work, including The Kitchen and Its Negative of 2008, two discrete but linked sculptures that represented the positive and negative side of domestic space and its capacity to hold tragedy in its facade.

McEwen’s architecturally-informed installation interrogates the relationship between architecture and truth-production. Elements of a C.I.A. interrogation facility are constructed at one-to-one scale. Referencing secret sites of U.S. military detention, the work incorporates testimony of deposition statements from detainees held in the “War on Terror”. The work reproduces the multi-sensory experience of the facility typology analyzed, including multimedia elements such as white noise and rap music, as based upon evidence gathered of actual C.I.A. detainment practices.

Displayed as a projection of a series of analytic mappings, Bureau E.A.S.T.’s Ceuta and Mellilia research project focuses on the peculiar situation of the only territories on mainland Africa that belong to the EU. The project seeks to analyze the impacts of such hard edge geo-political border formations on the urban landscape of Ceuta and Mellilia and on their Moroccan hinterlands. In doing so, the project reactivates the discourse on physical borders, which has been spurned in the past decades by postmodern liberal theorists (Castell and O’Brian) who proclaimed the advent of a “liquid, borderless” world. Instead, this research unveils the emergence of an elaborate paradigm of mobility control characterized by a significant trans-border economic inequality and the deployment of an urbanism of surveillance and exclusion.

Mitch McEwen is both a practicing designer and the Director and Founder of SUPERFRONT, a gallery and project space for architecture and interdisciplinary projects. Since founding SUPERFRONT in January 2008, she has curated more than a dozen exhibits and published 4 architectural catalogs, working with artists, historians, and architects from New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, Madrid, and elsewhere. Her exhibits at SUPERFRONT have investigated the relationship between architecture and performance, as well as phenomenology, community engagement, and urbanism.

Farrah Karapetian’s work frequently concerns moments of crisis as they register in architectural space, from the marks of unrest transcribed on the Western panels of the Berlin Wall to the charged space of shadows burnt into walls at Hiroshima. She works with cameraless photography in a sculptural field and her process results in images and forms that are, in the words of LA Times critic Leah Ollman, “more like a metaphor than a record.” Karapetian holds a BA from Yale (2000) and an MFA from UCLA (2008.) She has worked with space and photography internationally, including most recently an atrium designed by Richard Meier & Partners and a residency with the Los Angeles-based Wende Museum and Archive of the Cold War.

Bureau E.A.S.T. is a collaborative design practice based in Los Angeles, Toronto, and Fez, Morocco. Founded by Aziza Chaouni and Takako Tajima, Bureau E.A.S.T. is a collective of architects, landscape architects, urban designers, planners, and engineers. This diversity is reflected in the range of projects currently within their office – from the landscape master plan to revitalize a forgotten river to the intimate residential garden; from the renovation of a non-profit animal hospital to the adaptive reuse of a 17th century palace. Their work has been published and exhibited internationally, including the International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam; INDEX: Design to Improve Life in Copenhagen; and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN HABITAT) World Urban Forum.

OPEN HOUSE | STATE SECRETS opens July 22nd with reception 5pm – 8pm. On view through September 3rd, 2010.

Unplanned closes Friday July 2

SUPERFRONT LA — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 02:08:13 +0000

The group exhibit Unplanned: Research and Experiments at the Urban Scale closes Friday July 2 at 5pm. Gallery hours are Mon-Fri 1pm-5pm.

Order your Unplanned catalog before prices go up after the exhibit closes. After July 2nd, the paperback will be priced at $45 and the hardcover at $65. From now until July 2, the paperback is available at$36.95 and the hardcover at $52.95

Unplanned is on view through July 2, 2010

SUPERFRONT LA — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 03:40:43 +0000

Photos from the opening of Unplanned: Research and Experiments at the Urban Scale. Visit during gallery hours: Monday through Friday 1pm – 5pm until July 2, 2010.

Also, order the 156 page catalog paperback or hardcover here

All photos courtesy of WENDY GILMARTIN.

UNPLANNED: Research and Experiments at the Urban Scale opens March 25th 5pm

SUPERFRONT LA — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:33:37 +0000

UNPLANNED: Research and Experiments at the Urban Scale

25 March 2010 – 2 July 2010
Opening Reception Thursday March 25, 2010 5PM – 8PM
Pacific Design Center (PDC) Suite B208 | West Hollywood, CA | 90069

SUPERFRONT is proud to present UNPLANNED: Research and Experiments at the Urban Scale, the second SUPERFRONT LA exhibit of 2010.

[Order the catalog in hardcover or softcover here. Preview the catalog introduction.]

Just as the discipline of architecture faces a re-imagination of itself in this era of slow-motion global capitalism, the human population finds itself crossing the threshold to a predominantly urban existence. Many of the basic tenets underpinning urban planning – Cartesian geometry, programmatic taxonomy, contextualism – have been subject to skeptical investigation and rebellion in architecture throughout the past decade. Yet conventional urban planning continues, the discipline of urban planning operating much as it has since the 1960s (if not the 1860s). Leveraging an interdisciplinary focus, UNPLANNED: RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTS AT THE URBAN SCALE boldly presents a collection of radical methods for envisioning and producing space at the urban scale.

A group exhibit with more than twenty participants, UNPLANNED spans architecture, urban design, industrial design, conceptual art, and cartography to present an array of experimental work at the urban scale. Multi-disciplinary practitioners address emergent urbanism, “wild building”, and other alternatives to conventional urban planning. The exhibit is curated by SUPERFRONT Founder + Director Mitch McEwen with Associate Curator Cecilia Brock and Gallery Intern Jackie Koenig.

Work is exhibited in multiple formats, from physical models to drawings, animations, software applications, consumer products, and live film. Dealing with urban situations from derelict construction sites to refugee camps, favelas, temporary housing and other contemporary spatial phenomena, the exhibition confronts the current economic crises and larger issues of globalization.

Participants include architectural and urbanist collectives ae.i.ou (San Juan), Salottobuono (Venice), and Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today (London), as well as Francisca Benitez (New York), Benjamin Cadena (Brooklyn), McLain Clutter (University of Michigan TCAUP), Alex Delaunay (New York/Paris), Johanna Ferrer Guldager and Stine Laurberg Hansen (Copenhagen/ Los Angeles), Dennis Maher (Buffalo), curator Mitch McEwen (SUPERFRONT), Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz García of WAI Think Tank (Beijing), Riitta Oittinen (Helsinki), Hyeri Park (Seoul/Delft), Dubravka Sekulić (Belgrade/Maastricht), Alvaro Urbano (Madrid/Berlin), architects AGENCY (New York), Paul Schuette (Los Angeles), Nina Ilieva (Sofia/Los Angeles), John Briscella (Philadelphia), ZellnerPlus (Los Angeles), Darien Williams with INABA (Los Angeles), an advanced architecture studio at Columbia GSAPP taught by Mabel Wilson, and a student workshop from the Southern California Institute of Architecture directed by Michael Pinto of Project Food / LA (Los Angeles).

UNPLANNED opens March 25th with reception 5pm – 8pm. On view through July 2nd, 2010. This exhibit is partly enabled by generous donations from Sarah Millsaps and Mark Gardner.

Alvaro Urbano, “PERFUMING EAST TO WEST MANHATTAN FEBRUARY 2009″, 2009

ae.i.ou, “Appropriated”, 2009

McLain Clutter, “Topography of Urban Potentials,” 2009

Salottobuono, “Manual of Decolonization (Un-Roofing)”, 2008

Paul Schuette, “Fountain of Four”, 2009

John Briscella, “UGNB (Urban Gridded Notebook)” (detail), 2009

Unplanned catalog available for order

Excess | Liquidity opens January 30th with reception 4pm – 7pm.

SUPERFRONT LA — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:12:11 +0000

SUPERFRONT LA is proud to present Excess | Liquidity, an exhibit on the 5th floor of the Pacific Design Center, during the inaugural Art Los Angeles Contemporary fair.

Sited on the 5th floor of the Pacific Design Center, Excess | Liquidity presents a survey of recent work by experimental architectural practice X|A, exploring liquid form as architectural vocabulary. X|A deploys film-maker’s special effects software to generate architectural form through animated movement and fluid behaviors. Works are exhibited as physical prototypes, drawings, and animations.

Excess | Liquidity also presents a single work entitled “Fair.” Los Angeles artist Farrah Karapetian responds to the context of Art Los Angeles Contemporary with a text-based piece that presents the word “fair” as a tin casing lit by embedded fluorescents, but without the customary translucent facade of active signage. The piece evokes at once the urban streetscape and late 20th century conceptual art practices.

The title of the disjointed exhibit evokes the contemporary economic context, which affects both art practices and architectural production. Can liquid architecture be understood as a metaphor for the liquidity of global capital? Can conceptual art practices offer a lens to interrogate the formal movements of architectural production? What is fair between art and architecture, between art dealers and art collectors, between excess and its aftermath? These are some of the questions evoked.

Excess | Liquidity opens January 30th with reception 4pm – 7pm.

Excess | Liquidity is partly enabled by a generous donation from Walter McEwen, Jr.

X|A, “Liquid Sphere”, 2010

X|A is an experimental architecture practice founded in New York in 2007 by Erick Cárcamo and Nefeli Chatzimina. Their expertise is focused on innovative techniques derived from animation software, scripting and continuous academic research. The principals teach architecture at Columbia University GSAPP, PRATT Institute and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, die Angewandte.

Farrah Karapetian recently completed a residency with the Wende Museum and Archive of the Cold War in Los Angeles, where her work dealt with marks of unrest registered on the Western panels of the Berlin Wall. The artist’s work has frequently concerned moments of crisis as they register in architectural space, from foreclosed real estate to the shadows burnt into walls at Hiroshima. Her process tendentially results in images and forms that are, in the words of LA Times critic Leah Ollman, “more like a metaphor than a record.” Karapetian has exhibited her work in Los Angeles with Sandroni.Rey, at the Aspen Art Museum, and at the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Parc Saint-Léger, France, among other locations.

Farrah Karapetian, “Fair”, 2010

Architecture Live! on view through December 16

SUPERFRONT LA — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:59:53 +0000

Photos from the opening of Architecture Live! Visit during gallery hours: Monday through Friday 1pm – 5pm until December 16, 2009.

Hydroloops, installation by Paul Schuette

Ay Caremelles!, live film by Fake Industries Architectural Agonism

SUPERFRONT LA presents Architecture Live!

SUPERFRONT LA — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:56:57 +0000

SUPERFRONT is proud to present Architecture Live!, a group exhibit of architectural work that explores themes of live action and time. The exhibit features installations that incorporate live plants and light, as well as two projected works.

The exhibit features Paul Schuette, an architect and artist who was a fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program in 2005. Schuette’s work, Hydroloops, is comprised of living sculptures – live plants and light systems – that generate diagrams of their own behaviors and environment.

Architecture Live! also presents filmic pieces by two young Brooklyn-based architecture practices: Fake Industries Architectural Agonism and Decker Yeadon. ”Ay Caremelles”, a short live film, documents Fake Industries Architectural Agonism’s subversive approach to a municipal commission to activate a fenced-off square in Barcelona. ”Smart Screen” by architects Decker Yeadon is a brief painterly video of live footage of the architect’s thermo-responsive screen prototype opening and closing in response to ambient room temperatures.

Architecture Live! opens November 19th with reception 5pm – 8pm. On view through December 16.

Ay Caremelles!, still image of live film, by Fake Industries Architectural Agonism

Photo of Hydroloops, installation by Paul Schuette

SmartScreen, video of a thermo-responsive screen that opens and closes in response to ambient room temperatures, designed by Decker Yeadon

Call for entries: Unplanned (March 2010)

SUPERFRONT LA — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 22:00:39 +0000

photo of Caracas, courtesy "Landscapeofaztlan's Weblog"

The call for entries is closed. Thank you for submitting.

SUPERFRONT LA’s first exhibit of 2010 will address the urban scale. The group exhibit will span architecture, urban design, and urban planning to present emergent urbanism, “wild building”, and other alternatives to conventional modes of planning cities. Dealing with urban topics from derelict construction sites to refugee camps, favellas, temporary housing and other contemporary spatial phenomena, the exhibition will confront the current economic crises and larger issues of globalization. Work will be exhibited in multiple formats, from physical models to drawings, animations, video games or experimental formats.

Call for entries – please submit work for consideration in any format. By email: submit links, text description, or attached files no larger than 2 MB to unplanned@superfront.org . By hard-copy, submit to SUPERFRONT BK, 1432 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11216. Please do not send original work. If you want your materials returned, include a self-addressed stamped envelope. For consideration, all materials need to be received by November 30th.

Architects, urban designers, and planners selected for exhibition will be notified December 8th.

Unplanned will open at SUPERFRONT LA at the Pacific Design Center in February 2010 (exact date TBA) and will be on view for 3 months

Please post any questions as a comment to this page, rather than emailing. Thank you.

Call for Entries: Architecture Live!

SUPERFRONT LA — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:27:33 +0000

projector at SUPERFRONT LA

Calling architects and urban designers – submit your DVDs to SUPERFRONT for consideration in Architecture Live!, an exhibit opening at SUPERFRONT LA next month (mid November – exact date TBA)

Submit DVDs showing your own animations or live film of your own work in architecture or urban design – from a few seconds to 10 minutes. The work may be animation or live film, but should address contemporary architecture at this moment. The work may involve material experiments, color, time-lapse or other themes that relate to the medium of film and animation. Highly rendered fly-through animations of complete projects will not receive much attention. The focus is on experimental work.

Two DVDs will be selected for exhibition for 6 weeks at SUPERFRONT LA at the Pacific Design Center. The architects or urban designers chosen for exhibition will be announced on the SUPERFRONT website November 3rd.

To submit your work for consideration, please send one DVD for consideration, formatted to “auto-play” and labelled with your name and contact information to:

SUPERFRONT BK, 1432 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11216

If you wish the work returned, include a self-addressed stamped envelope. Please do not send DVDs to the Los Angeles location.

Deadline for receipt of DVDs is October 27th. Please post any questions as a comment to this page, rather than emailing. Thank you.

Farrah Karapetian’s essay on Perry Hall: Painting, Time, and Material Intelligence

SUPERFRONT LA — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 20:48:13 +0000

: photo of the Maison Martin Margiela store facade in Beverly Hills, which Karapetian compares to Hall’s work

Perry Hall
Painting, Time, and Material Intelligence
by: Farrah Karapetian

The foundation, roof, walls, doors, and windows of a structure comprise its envelope. These elements define the separation between interior and exterior, but they also define such intangibles as airflow and temperature. The enclosure influences its contents as well as literally containing them.

Perry Hall’s argument for paint is as much dependent on the concept of the container as it fascinated with the material itself. For his Livepaintings, Hall videotapes paint as it shivers and scallops from the influence of sound waves, temperature changes, and other variables. While these variables are the catalyst for the sensual imagery that results, the containers in which the paint is housed are the constants that define the ways in which the reactions will take place. In Hall’s videos, the container is never visible – his focus is always the swirling morass of liquid color – but the depth of the paint, the shapes of its movement, and the ways in which light reflects off of its surface all suggest a specific form employed to retain the paint. (Paint in a cylindrical container will behave differently than paint on a flat surface, for example.) Hall’s moving picture is of the interior of the structure – all flow – but implies the envelope and the environment beyond.

These videos are shown flat – as projections or on screens – and this method of presentation begs the question of flatness in Hall’s imagery. Clearly, what is pictured in his videos are volumes of paint, but what is available to the viewer is all surface. The volatility of the surface does not take away from the fact that there is only ever a surface pictured. One sees the skin of the paint – a new series of skins revealed with each aggravation, but a skin, nonetheless. The lighting in the room in which the paints are videotaped influences the way we see the paint as a volume – it accentuates curves and slips over wavelets, defining little landscapes for those allusionistically inclined. Still, video – projected flat on a wall or shown on a screen – resists depth, and the illusions thereof are only that. What one looks at is surface, contained.

The election of the artist to show video and to permit the volumetric influence of light suggests that this work is not only an argument for paint, but for paint in photographic terms. Some of Hall’s decalcomania paintings are done on x-ray paper instead of Masonite or other surfaces on which it is more conventional to paint. These various decisions are evidence of a relationship to photography that may be inescapable in contemporary painting. Some of Hall’s paintings echo gestural acts of Gerhard Richter’s, an artist whose work has consequentially explored the relationship between painting and photography. Some of the webbing in Hall’s paintings also recalls the intricacies of a Vija Celmins drawing – work also highly linked to photography – though Celmins’ medium is controlled and his relies on chance. Hall’s very investment in experiment recalls the work of Marco Breuer, an artist who coaxes colors and patterns out of photographic paper using temperature and other devices of provocation.

Overall, though, these referential and formal strands are subject to the reigning sensuality of Hall’s work, which forces conceptual argument to the backstage. Perry Hall’s paintings and videos are biological and excessive. If they recall an actual architecture, it is the façade of the Martin Margiela store in Los Angeles; the surface of this envelope is swathed in silver paillettes that shiver under the influence of breeze and reflect the Southern California sun, not at all unlike Hall’s quivering liquids or his staged exercises in perception.