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.