Contemplating Void Guggenheim Exhibition Photo, Ball Nogues Studio NYC Show News, Manhattan Design Images

Exhibition by Ball Nogues Studio in New York City, USA

Contemplating Void at the Guggenheim, 1071 5th Ave, NY 10128, United States of America

Feb 4, 2010

Address: 1071 5th Ave, New York, NY 10128, United States

Contraptions for the Production of Cultural Confections
2010
by Ball Nogues Studio with Jessica Fleischmann

Contemplating Void Guggenheim Exhibition, New York City

On the occasion of the Guggenheim Museum’s 50th anniversary, the Guggenheim has invited approximately 250 artists, architects, and designers to imagine their dream intervention in Frank Lloyd Wright’s rotunda. A salon-style installation of two-dimensional renderings of their visionary projects will emphasize the rich and diverse range of inspired proposals will take place from February 12 though April 28, 2009.

Serving more one-million visitors annually at the Guggenheim’s New York facility and more than three-million at worldwide at its other facilities, the Guggenheim Museum already presents organized exhibition of precious cultural artifact for the general public’s enjoyment and delectation. These exhibitions, often organized in a linear structure, present the viewer with a complex offering of audio, visual and textural experiences that impart to the visitor a satisfying sense of culture and history. At the end of these exhibitions, visitors are typically directed to the gift shop where they too can acquire weighty tomes and gewgaws which further reinforce the doctrines developed over the course of the visitor’s experience.

After careful consideration of the Guggenheim Museum spatially and programmatically, Ball Nogues Studio recognized the institution’s unique sequence of inter-connected galleries and ramps as an architectural form well suited for adaptation as an industrial manufacturing assembly line. Seeking to convert the museum’s current cultural production to a more sustainable manufacturing system, Ball Nogues Studio suggests adapting Wright’s masterwork into a contraption for the transformation of raw, organic sugar cane into a delectable candy confection cum art installation and industrial expo that is both easy to eat and delicious.

Their proposed re-use is an acknowledgement of the imperative of architects to shape the careful appropriation and preservation of the noted structure while adapting it economically and functionally using new green technologies and systems. That Wright designed the structure, a priori, to suit this pressing, contemporary need is proof enough that form follows function.

Contraptions for the Production of Cultural Confections images / information from Ball Nogues Studio

Contemplating Void Guggenheim – Exhibition 2010

CONTEMPLATING THE VOID: INTERVENTIONS IN THE GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM

An Anniversary Benefit Exhibition

More Than 200 Artists, Architects, and Designers Invited to Imagine Dream
Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum as Finale to 50th Anniversary Year

Venue: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, New York

Dates: February 12–April 28, 2010
Preview: Friday, February 12, 2010, 9–11 am

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum 50th anniversary

NEW YORK, NY (December 17, 2009)–Since its opening in 1959, the Frank Lloyd Wright– designed Guggenheim building has served as an inspiration for invention, challenging artists and architects to react to its eccentric, organic design. The central void of the rotunda has elicited many unique responses over the years, which have been manifested in both sitespecific solo shows and memorable exhibition designs.

For the building’s 50th anniversary, the Guggenheim Museum invited more than two hundred artists, architects, and designers to imagine their dream interventions in the space for the exhibition Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum. Organized by Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, and David van der Leer, Assistant Curator for Architecture and Design, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the exhibition will feature renderings of these visionary projects in a salon-style installation that will emphasize the rich and diverse range of the proposals received. Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum will be on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum from February 12 to April 28, 2010.

Aristotle famously pronounced that nature abhors a vacuum, an idea that still resonates in art today. In designing the Guggenheim Museum, Wright flaunted the notion of the void, leaving the center tantalizingly (or threateningly) empty. Over the years, when creating site-specific installations or exhibition designs for the building, artists and architects have imbued the space with their presences, inspiring unforgettable works by Matthew Barney, Cai Guo- Qiang, Frank Gehry, Jenny Holzer, and Nam June Paik, among others.

For the building’s 50th anniversary, the Guggenheim invited scores of artists to leave practicality or even reality behind in conjuring their proposals for the space. In this exhibition of ideal projects, certain themes emerge, including the return to nature in its primordial state, the desire to climb the building, the interplay of light and space, the interest in diaphanous effects as a counterpoint to the concrete structure, and the impact of sound on the environment. Conceived as both a commemoration and a self-reflexive folly, Contemplating the Void confirms how truly catalytic the architecture of the Guggenheim can be.

Submissions were received from all over the world from a wide range of artists, designers, and architects, including emerging as well as established practitioners. Among the many works in the exhibition are projects by artists Alice Aycock, FAKE DESIGN (Ai Weiwei), Anish Kapoor, Sarah Morris, Wangechi Mutu, Mike Nelson, Paul Pfeiffer, Doris Salcedo, Lawrence Weiner, and Rachel Whiteread; designers such as Fernando and Humberto Campana, Martí Guixé, Joris Laarman Studio, and Studio Job; and architects such as Álvaro Siza Vieira Arquitecto, BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), Greg Lynn FORM, junya.ishigami+associates, MVRDV, N55, Philippe Rahm, Snøhetta, Studio Daniel Libeskind, Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects, and West 8.

In addition to the exhibition in the Thannhauser and Annex Level 4 galleries, Contemplating the Void will be accompanied by a comprehensive exhibition Web site, which will document each submission and feature introductory essays texts by Nancy Spector and David van der Leer.

Contemplating Void Guggenheim Exhibition information from Ball Nogues Studio

Location: Address: 1071 5th Ave, New York, NY 10128, USA

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA
Date built: 1956
Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright

photo : David M. Heald, © SRGF, New York
Guggenheim Museum New York

A Guggenheim Exhibition on e-architect:

Guggenheim Frank Lloyd Wright Exhibition, New York, USA
A Long-Awaited Tribute : Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian House and Pavilion

photo : David M. Heald, © SRGF, New York
Guggenheim Frank Lloyd Wright Exhibition

Exhibitions – chronological list

Ball-Nogues Studio Installation

Unseen Current and Echoes Converge, USA / Italy
2009

photograph : Michelle Litvin
Ball-Nogues Studio Installations

Another Guggenheim Exhibition on e-architect:

stillspotting nyc : Manhattan, NYC, USA
To a Great City by Arvo Pärt and Snøhetta

photo © Snøhetta 2011
Guggenheim Exhibition Lower Manhattan, NYC

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