Celebrity Modernism

Recently I borrowed a book on architect Craig Ellwood, because I was in a California kind of mood (which is every other day actually). Elwood was a modernist, at the very tail end of the movement but well before any post-business happened.


Funny enough, the book starts off with how overlooked and underrated Ellwood is etc.


Ellwood might have not been the most original,

but there is definitely something to his woodsy minimalism.

great collage for the Bridge House.

or maybe this is the Bridge house and the other one is called something else...  I've since returned the book to the library, and too lazy to google.





Anyway, as I'm browsing through I happen upon the ultra fabulous Palevsky House in Palm Springs, which I know was Ellwoods' since I've blogged it before, but somehow it really popped amidst all the other Bear Bungalows in the book. 

The Pavlevsky house is fabulous because it has no windows. 

Everything that goes on inside is behind tall white walls, and the plan does not allow even for a glimpse when the gates open. And because you cant see, it makes you (me) want to know what goes on even more. 

Lindsay Lohan detoxing?Celebrity Modernism? 

Perhaps a Tina-fuelled week-long party? Chi Chi LaRue shooting another bad gay porn? In fact the house would be the perfect setting for something like that.

High times on the Highline

The Highline has played a major part of the restructuring of the west side of Manhattan, and to think that a few years ago it was an abandoned railroad that became the pet project of a few dedicated Manhattanites called the Friends of the Highline.

What is really genius is the way Diller Scofidio & Renfro together with Field Operations managed to translate and retain the abandonedness of it, while completely redesigning the place as a fabulous public space, dare I say it, as a brand new ruin.




And suddenly you are walking on the highline and there's even architecture to look at, which is really new for NY.

Like this housing by Jean Nouvel with the somehow mesmerising facade treatment.(perhaps even a bit scary if you look at it every day)

next to the Shigeru Ban garage door lofs , sitting next to the familiar Gehry office building.

all together making a sort of dysfunctional family one enjoys to look at

as the sun goes down reflected on the now perfectly located Phillips de Pury showroom, 

and looking the other way, a view you never had from a public space in New York, unless you went all the way to the river

Further along the "coast", we saw the great Spencer Sweeny "show" with a different performance every day at Gavin Brown

a few days later followed by the almost opposite but equally great exhibition of Silke Otto Knapp's eerie painting. 

Another night I went to The National Arts Club to listen to Mr Renfro talk about everything apart from Lincoln Center (and the Highline of course).

NAC has to be one of the weirdest decors ever, ready for a Casa Vogue photoshoot.

and finally a few more gems from MOMA:

Two amazing models of Best stores 

by SITE of course

and a great model of Dome House by Paolo Soleri, so far away from anything New or New York

Electric Labyrinth Revisited

So when a few weeks ago I blogged about Arata Isozaki's Re-Ruined Hiroshima, I mentioned the legendary "Electric Labyrinth" installation. Well it was legendary in my imagination, because it sounded legendary. Browsing through Isozakis' super cute (though I'm not lovin the sketchy handcrafted layout) UNBUILT book,

I see photos from the said Electric Labyrinth, and while it is what it sounds like, it wasnt really what I had in mind. Still to be able to pull off an architectural installation during the 1968 riots is really quite a feat.

The installation was in fact cool, a forest of rotating metallic panels printed with images from Re-Ruined Hiroshima and with other images projected on top.
So not just a ruin, not just electric but also quite trippy, but hey it was the 60s after all.

Browsing through the book, there's of course plenty of space dedicated to the "Cities in the Air" category of projects, nice plan of clusters, etc.

Also, a great photo from  the maquette of the truly legendary Osaka Expo 70, that talks about all the mechanisms and the robots.

And then all of a sudden the book skips to Isozakis' later preoccupation with platonic solids and symbolism, leading right into his glass pyramid and terracotta arch period, which doesn't really make sense with the heroic projects of the 60's but maybe Osaka was the missing link to that transition. Anyways, I feel like I'm about to OD on blogging so...

Fast Mark Gaetano Pesce Gold Organic Kaleidoscope

Just got the new issue of Mark Magazine, which features Ron Arad's Holon Design Museum  on the cover. The museum just opened with "The State of Things: Design and the 21st Century" curated by Barbara J. Bloemink, Julie Lasky, Aric Chen and Garth Walker. The inaugurating exhibition features the Wrapped Armchair (Gold).

In the Mark issue, there is a spread on the exceedingly genius Gaetano Pesce, whom I've blogged numerous times. Just last week I sent off a text contribution to Kaleidoscope Magazine, on Mr Pesce, out this month. I had wanted to somehow mention his 1970's super eccentric organic architecture, but could only manage a reference in the piece. And by chance, here it is in Mark, in the form of a brand new project, a house configured as portraits of the clients (! looks like the kind of building Angelo would take a portrait of).

There is an obvious continuity between the new project and Pesce's Tree House from 1970

and even more interesting, the very famous Organic Building, realized in Osaka in 1970 or so..talk about bunker flowerpots .. found here somewhere in flickr

Artists for Athens Pride, and more from Athens Galleries

Last night was the Artists for Athens Pride auction, , which you can read all about at Angelo Says featuring works by Στιβ Γιαννάκος, Zoë Charlton, Χρήστος Δεληδήμος, Χριστίνα Δημητριάδη, Κωνσταντίνος Κακανιάς, Κατερίνα Κανά, Em Kei, Jeremy Kost, Kalup Linzy, Τέο Μιχαήλ, Ντόρα Οικονόμου, Χριστόδουλος Παναγιώτου, Άγγελος Παπαδημητρίου, Μαρία & Ντόρα Παπαδημητρίου, Λήδα Παπακωνσταντίνου, Poka-Yio, Γιώργος Σαπουντζής, Scott Treleaven, Sharon Thomas, Νίκος Χαραλαμπίδης, Πέτρος Χρυσοστόμου and Μανταλίνα Ψωμά. (yes I was too bored to re-type all the names in english, but you can read all about it on Angelo Says)

The auction is an initiative of Breeder Gallery with curator Andrea Gilbert. It is a serious fundraiser for the emerging Athens Pride festival, and happily the auction was sold out, with record prices for works by Poka-Yio and Kalup Linzy.

Meanwhile, at the main spaces of Breeder, you can still see a great Ryan McGinley show

featuring photos of cute boys and girls
exchanging pills,

jumping up in the air,

and hiding inside fabulous multicolored caves.

Meanwhile, Loraini Alimandiri GazonRouge gallery has relocated to the legendary,

and perhaps now strangely renovated,  Aristomenis Provelengios building, famous for being a small scale urban house-studio.







The second show is Isabelle Fein,

I managed to peak at a super cute Ryan McLaughlin
painting from the first exhibition.

A few blocks down, Apartment Gallery has also found new digs,  in a grand classic 1930's apartment,

 and kicked off the season with a show by lovely Maria Andelman

Goodbye Kalimera

It's a bit tough that in the fabulous BUTT Calendar you have to rip off the pages as the weeks go by.
That means its time to say goodbye to Kalimera.
(Kalimera is the name of apparently the most famous drag queen in Serbia. Hilariously, it means Good morning in Greek)

February Good Ogre