Victims of architectural excavations

In 1985, the 16-year-old Gregor Schneider began a process dismantling and rebuilding rooms inside his family’s apartment building in Rheydt, Germany. Inside its exterior walls he began to build replicas of the spaces by building complete rooms inside other rooms. Then, with the help of machines, he slowly began pushing rooms around. Some, however, are no longer accessible. They have been moved behind walls and others have been isolated by concrete, or sound absorbing materials. The building has been transformed into a labyrinth with such narrow passages, and getting stuck is a frightening possibility. The wrong door might be opened, and the person will disappear into a void of architectural duplications. And as he once remarked, “I’d love to stop someone from getting away some time.”

Like Schneider’s Totes Haus u r, the exterior of the recently closed Highlight Galley Project Space 3020 Laguna Street in Exitum might look somewhat anonymous in San Francisco’s Cow Hollow area. But when I enter the building, nothing is longer normal. Both apartment buildings are victims of some forceful architectural excavation. Walls have been surgically cut out. Removed from its former usage just to end up hanging loose from the ceiling—like theater backdrops. And standing in what might once have been the living room, I can see the external walls of the building. Illuminating light shines in through its wooden beams. Similarly, in Totes Haus u r, you might think you are viewing external walls inside a larger space. But when a window is opened, there is no outside to be seen. Instead there is a second window. There never seem to be an outside. Every door leads back into the house.

Gaston Bachelard writes in The Poetics of Space, that the cellar “is first and foremost the dark entity of the house, the one that partakes of subterranean forces. When we dream we are in harmony with the irrationality of the depths." The cellar in Gregor Schneider’s building is disturbing as one “glimpses details of dolls hanging from the ceiling or shattered against the floor.” In the Laguna Street building, the cellar has been flooded and traces of a disfigured human-sized figure-sculpture are left, sunk to its bottom. In both cases, the cellar has evidently become the section where irrational thoughts have been transformed into narrative elements, whereas the rest of the building is more about formally exploring ways of working with layers of architecture.

The 3020 Laguna Street in Exitum existed between January 20th – February 28th, 2012. It was curated by Amir Mortazavi and David Kasprzak and included the artists Jeremiah Barber, Randy Colosky, Chris Fraser, Christine Peterson, Yulia Pinkusevich, Jonathan Runcio, Jesse Schlesinger, Gareth Spor, and Andy Vogt. More information and images can be seen at the Highlight Gallery website.

The tree burl on Hotel Des Arts

The streetscape of Downtown San Francisco has been altered. If you look attentively that is. A new house has been erected, and its old-fashioned wooden architecture clearly extinguishes itself from Downtown's otherwise impressively tall concrete buildings. Above and between older properties sits a rustic, small, door-less cabin. Floating approximately 40 feet in the air, it has been affixed to the Hotel Des Arts on 447 Bush Street.

The small cabin functions almost like a tree burl, a growth that is part of the tree but that grows in a disfigured manner. I like the comparison to a tree burl. This small cabin works almost like an outgrowth on this hectic street in San Francisco. As a commentary on the economy and the housing crisis, I find it interesting to think of the burl as being the result of a tree affected by some form of stress. An injury, virus, insect infestation, or pollution may cause the outgrowth. Even though there is no beauty behind the cause of a tree burl, it is still quite commonly prized for its artistry. And here, on Bush Street, it is growing in this expensive city where thousands are struggling to keep a roof over their heads. It is beautiful in its awkwardness, it is sticking out from its surrounding, and it will take a lot of willpower to finally get it removed from the structure it is attached to – all qualities easily applied to a tree bur.

This wooden cabin is meant to be stumbled upon. The daily street strollers have the possibility to piece together their own stories based on the fragment that is left, literally dangling in the air. To me it is a reminder that history at great length is dependent on hearsay and storytelling. History is after all nothing but the rediscovery, organization, and presentation of information about past events. Unexpectedly confronting the cabin the street strollers would not be able to depend on anything except their own imagination. Since there is no sign here to inform what the cabin is actually about, they would manufacture their own history about this space based on the limitations of their own mental ability.

The small cabin is titled "Manifest Destiny" and is collaboration between the Brooklyn-based artist Mark Reigelman and the San Francisco based architect Jenny Chapman. Its exterior is made from 100-year-old reclaimed wood from an Ohio barn and solar panels on the roof lights up the cabin's interior by night.

This temporary site-specific installation was commissioned by Southern Exposure and made possible through The Graue Family Foundation. It will remain on view until October 2012.

Regarding Hotel Palenque

In 1969 Robert Smithson took a trip down to Mexico to experience its ancient architecture. In a lecture three years later he presented his experience to the architecture students of the University of Utah. While showing a series of thirty-one color slides he presented to them a story about the Hotel Palenque and Yucatan.

It has been well documented that Smithson had a great interest for architectural ruins. It must have been somewhat surprising when it turned out that what he was in actuality documenting during his travels was not the Mayan architecture, but the hotel that he was staying at. The hotel was undergoing a cycle of simultaneous decay and renewal. What fascinated him was that it was continually being built at one end, while falling apart and dissolving into nature at another. The hotel came to symbolize the process of destruction and renovation known to Mayan culture. Through his presentation he turns the hotel into a contemporary ruin where truths and histories are lost. He begins with an overall photograph showing the hotel. He then continues through its tiled walkway, collapsed terrace, emptied swimming pool, evacuated dancehall, a partially collapsed stairway, and finally he end by showing a photograph of a closed green door. In the whole lecture the ancient Mayan ruins, for which the place is famous, is almost completely ignored. They are recorded only as a possible view from one of the hotel’s windows. The historical architecture remains a backdrop and becomes outshone by the archeology of the Hotel Palenque.

The written text in Cellar in the Attic, one of my most recent art projects, is referencing Robert Smithson’s lecture. A hotel is mentioned and one gets the idea that it follows the lead of a person currently residing inside this hotel. The whole experience is not meant to undermine, or give proof to any form of documentation or history writing. Stories are told and the degree of fiction is irrelevant. It is a hybrid of historical facts, fabrications by other writers, as well as personal associations.

At times, when I make my half-brave attempts at figuring out why I am making art, I end up finding my greatest support in a quote from the great writer Jorge Luis Borges. In an interview he writes, “I’m not sure why I have to define myself. I rather go on wondering and puzzling about things, for I find that very enjoyable.” I very much enjoy puzzling over things. Answers do not interest me. That is partly why I decided to end my narrative story with the image of a closed door. There are plenty of closed doors in this series, but only one is never opened. While the rest of the doors are opened up, just to reveal impenetrable walls, this particular door is “always glowing. I would only have to give it the slightest push. But it is beautiful just as an image to look at.” While the rest of the hotel seems to hold the narrating resident captive, this one door suggests otherwise. The door that Smithson ends with is a green one. He writes, “it’s just a green door. We’ve all seen green doors at one time in our lives. It gives out a sense of universality that way, a sense of kind of global cohesion. The door probably opens up to nowhere and closes on nowhere so that we leave the Hotel Palenque with this closed door and return to the University of Utah.” In that way it can be said that both projects ends with a door that has the possibility of leading somewhere but that, for one or another reason, remain closed. Some doors should only be opened in the imagination.

The book Cellar in the Attic, is available through Lulu.