“Nothing to Fear” Facade

Recently we were commissioned to do a design-build facade installation for Peter G.-Ray’s 2009 ‘Nothing to Fear’ painting exhibition at the Bridge Gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Two years earlier we debuted his work in the U.S. at AxD Gallery with a solo show entitled ‘CUT’. For that exhibition we built rolled aluminum panels on the exterior of our gallery, creating the appearance of their being cut and peeled away.

Views of finished window at Bridge Gallery, and the painting "Cut" by Peter G.-Ray, displaying similarly hand-rolled aluminum panels.

The designs for both gallery fronts flowed as fairly direct extensions of the artist’s interests in concealing, cutting, peeling and revealing. In his work, openings, whether rendered physically in cut materials or graphically with painted surfaces, are invitations for engagement. Simply put, Peter’s work invites curiosity. As art critic Ken Moffett has noted: “G.-Ray has combined the hallucinatory surrealism of Dali with the vigor and freedom of Jackson Pollock, metamorphosing these into something startlingly new. He hungers to unite extremes: Precision and free improvisation, the intensely graphic and beautifully painted, exquisite refinement of detail and pictorial force.” All in all, there is plenty in Peter G.-Ray’s work to sustain interest and wonder.

Our design-build exercises to date have all been conducted as “charrettes” of a week or less. In the case of the Bridge Gallery façade installation we had the added constraint of performing all of the work in a single day, including round trip transportation from Philadelphia, with materials and equipment fitting inside a mid-sized sedan.

Fortunately working conditions were absolutely perfect. The weather was very mild for late February. The trickiest part of the project was securing our work to the Bridge Gallery without permanently altering the existing marble façade. We accomplished this by working the head and a jamb of our frame into existing security gate hardware and bolting the base into the concrete sidewalk. Interest in our installation piece increased dramatically as the first aluminum panels were screwed onto the frame. (See “before” and installation photos below.)

Neighboring shop owners, tourists and random passersby stopped to ask us what was going on. We handed out quite a few postcards for Nothing to Fear during that Spring-like afternoon. As we finished up at dusk, Peter G.-Ray was quite pleased with results … the debut for both of us in NYC. Two days later, it snowed at the March 1st opening reception!

www.bridgegalleryny.com

axd window display competition

This month, AxD held it’s first ever Window Display Competition.  The event was in conjunction with Design Philadelphia.

The window display for this months art show, Organic Mechanics, along with the show’s opening reception and an “on the boards” tour or recent architectural work by our studio, were all combined into one of this year’s DESIGN PHILADELPHIA events held at our studio + gallery on Friday, Oct. 17.

The window display competition was open to a group of 3rd year architecture students from Philadelphia University, where AxD designer Christopher Stromberg teaches.  The students researched the artist, Deborah Sawyer, and her work in order to come up with their designs.  The winning entry was by Sean Campbell.  Sean’s theme was “Rust and Rustication”.  Although his submission was not a “blueprint” for an actual display, the concepts of his design formed the basic theme of the display.  His entry is posted below along with the actual display.

AxD also chose Valerie Becker’s submission as the first runner-up and Ryan Kidd’s submission as the second runner up.  An honorable mention was also awarded to Nicholas Stephens.  Elements of all these entries were incorporated into the final design.  We showcased all ten of the student’s entries in our “studio expansion area” in the back of our office during the event.  Sean also came to the gallery a few days before the show to help us with the fabrication and installation of the final window display.

Congratulations to the winning entries and thank you to all the students for their hard work and creativity.

Christopher Stromberg

Art + Architecture

When we relocated in order to expand our architectural studio, we started AxD Gallery as an exhibition venue for contemporary visual arts. The most frequent question since its opening in January 2007 has been: What’s the connection between the architectural studio and the art gallery? The answer involves a constellation of reasons. Obviously we find a significant overlap between the visual arts and the aesthetic issues that architects and designers face daily. As such, the gallery represents and functions for us as an incubation laboratory for ideas and inspirations. Secondly, we see the gallery as a form of social activism, supporting the arts and bringing community together. And finally, it’s awfully fun to host a reception party once a month and catch up with friends!

The art of any era can provide inspiration for us as designers. Constructivism, Futurism, Abstract Expressionism, Op Art, Minimalism and patterns of various tribal “folk arts” have all been frequently been mined by architects for ideas. Japanese woodblock prints served as a great inspiration to Frank Lloyd Wright. The Pictures at an Exhibition concerto by Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky is an obvious example of an artist seeking to transpose a visual experience to a musical one. When we began the Gallery we were thinking exclusively of visual artists, but obviously all art forms influence each other. Consequently, since our opening we have expanded to intermittently include various performing arts – both musical and theatrical as well.

In our own work we have looked to artists such as Sean Scully, Ellsworth Kelly and Agnes Martin for inspiration. For the interior of our gallery we chose to differentiate “service elements” (i.e. restroom and a stair) as abstract objects ‘carved’ out of the whiteness of the gallery. These elements were clad with Douglas Fir wood panels. The panel pattern was inspired by the painting Cite’ by Ellsworth Kelly, which ironically was itself inspired by oblique shadows cast from an architectural feature – a fire escape.

As I am writing this, AxD Gallery is featuring the work of Deborah Sawyer. Her work encompasses a variety of media, including oil paints, charcoal, gouache, found objects, glass, vinyl, rubber and various types of metal – cast, forged and welded. For this body of work, her inspirations come largely from the rusting decay of discarded automobiles. Sculptural pieces include functional furniture, various bowels and containers. Paintings and drawn works evoke a range of emotions, from quiet serenity to foreboding tension or remorse. Her work reminds us that even the detritus of our very existence can be an inspiration.

We’re looking forward to learning and sharing the back-and-forth of how architecture, visual, and performing arts shape and transform one another.

Ed Barnhart, AIA