Arts & Entertainment
 

Blaffer showcases conceptual architects

Other exhibits use audio/video tricks, involve audience

by Amy Perez
The Daily Cougar

Proving once again true to its mission to "present art that is intellectually stimulating and relevant," UH's own Blaffer Gallery presents three diverse exhibitions this semester, simultaneously on display now through March 14.

Featured in the downstairs galleries is the exhibit entitled Trespassing: Houses x Artists, the result of an expanded project set in motion by New York architects Alan Koch and Linda Taalman — also founders of the New York-based architectural practice OpenOffice - in 1998. What began as a forum for a wide range of artists to engage in discussion about the design of houses quickly escalated into an exhibition when nine contemporary artists were prompted to design a house unrestricted by architectural impulses, scale, site condition and finances.

The resulting conceptual sketches, digital media, architectural and full-scale models by artists Kevin Appel, Barbara Bloom, Chris Burden, Jim Isermann, T. Kelly Mason, Julian Opie, Renee Petropoulos, David Reed and Jessica Stockholder challenge the viewer to think critically about the form and function of the house.

Two other exhibitions are featured in the upstairs galleries. Inset, the fifth exhibition in Blaffer's Special Projects series, combines the work of Alec Finlay, Jens Haaning, Kelly Mark, Jonathan Monk, N55 and Deborah Stratman for a display of work that connects with the social space beyond gallery settings. The artists created works meant for direct involvement of the audience, gallery, city and wider community. A few examples include the issues of borders and the foreigner's condition presented on fly-posted posters ("Arabic Joke," Jens Haaning) and the enactment of a series of discrete public performances ("Hiccup," Kelly Mark).

Organized by Atopia Projects, the curatorial team of curator and critic Gavin Morrison and artist Fraser Stables, Inset examines art as a means of social change and the implications involved in considering such actions as valid art.

Also on view in the upstairs galleries is the exhibition Solo Shoot, featuring the latest work by artist Fraser Stables. In what is the Scotland native's first one-person show, Stables employs video installations to experiment with the concepts of dislocation and contradiction. The artist focuses on a character used in his earlier work, Scott, and uses this character as a medium for exploring the tradition of oral story-telling and experimenting with video equipment that creates distance between content and viewer.

Through the use of editing devices, Stables confronts viewers with a single audio dialogue synchronized to two different video projections of Scott reciting the same story, only at different points in the narrative and from different perspectives. Because only one video projection matches the audio track at a time, viewers are left to piece the narrative together themselves.

If the architectural concepts presented in Trespassing: Houses x Artists interest you, Galia Solomonoff of OpenOffice, New York will give a lecture 6 p.m. Feb. 24 in the Hines College of Architecture building. 

Or you can pack a sandwich and attend a Brown Bag Lunch Tour with Dr. Nora Laos, Assistant Professor of Architectural History, noon Feb. 26, also at the Hines building.

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