MARIBOR EVENT CENTER

This project for the 2012 Venice Biennale began with the introduction of hard crystalline figures into a loose outer sack. Similar to the STRP Mutant series by Dutch artist Bart Hess, the sack is tightened over these figures so that their points and edges produce strange formal inflections that quickly fall off into a taut flatness. The sack simultaneously exposes, restrains, and mutates the crystalline figures. Of particular interest is the formation of void spaces when the outer skin shifts from tight fit to loose fit and ceases to index the figures entirely.

Using the inflected sack as a mold, an interior liner surface is introduced and fills the void spaces between the figures and the sack boundary, as if inflated into all of the leftover crevices. When the sack is then removed, the result is a set of discrete parts separated by massive figural joints, which nonetheless form a coherent new object. This method confounds the idea of building massing as monolithic in favor of a productive part-to-whole relationship based on an ontology of all parts.

Reflection effects derived from shining bars of light onto the glossy sack are reified into patterns of architectural tattoos. These tattoos leap over joints and between parts to further produce ambiguity as to the status of the whole.