From September 14th to October 8th, 2023, "Psicoarquitectura" will be showcased at the German Pavilion, designed by Mies Van der Rohe and Lilly Reich, located in the city of Barcelona. The Mies van der Rohe Foundation, in collaboration with LAB 36 and Senda Gallery, is hosting this temporary artistic intervention by the artist and architect Oscar Abraham Pabón. This intervention explores the materiality of this iconic work of the Modern Movement, delving into its interpretative and psychological dimensions.
In the context of the Barcelona Gallery Weekend and the Swab Festival, the Psychoarchitecture project presents a new interpretation of the German Pavilion in Barcelona from a psychological perspective, reflecting on the relationship between the shapes drawn on the building's walls and the Rorschach test inkblots. Exploring the constructive materiality through bricks, their layers, and fragments, Oscar Abraham Pabón's intervention occurs in two acts: firstly, an introductory one serving as a reference framework, and secondly, one that encompasses the artistic intervention itself, smoothly integrated into the Pavilion that inspired his reflection.
Taking as a reference the symmetrical forms of the Pavilion's surfaces, the artist seeks to establish a parallel with the shapes of the sheets created by the psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach (1884-1922) by folding a sheet with an inkblot as a projective method to assess and diagnose those who look at them based on what they see. In the quest to find a figurative meaning in the ambiguity of these forms, the responses reveal aspects of the implicit mental life in the act of perception. Similarly, Oscar proposes to take us from the object to interpreting the interpreted subject.
If the German Pavilion of 1929 symbolizes the future of modern housing, "Psicoarquitectura" could provide an interpretation of the evolution of that modernity, but now from a psychic and somatized dimension. I understand the clay brick as a skin that covers a significant part of the architecture and the city inherited from the modernist project. - Oscar Abraham Pabón
A wall is materialized over the Pavilion's pond using fired earth blocks (Calibric ONE), and a new inkblot drawing is engraved on its surface. This drawing emerges from the author's interpretation, establishing a connection with the Pavilion and its reflection in the water. The clay block is presented as an object of interpretation. The wall serves as a surface or skin that brings an internal dimension to the forefront through its various layers, not only encapsulating the material's construction history but also highlighting its significance in 20th-century architecture and urbanism.
It is worth noting that Mies van der Rohe used brick as a structural material and for its aesthetic characteristics in some of his works contemporaneously with the Barcelona Pavilion, such as the Haus Lange and Haus Esters in Krefeld. As Werner Blaser highlighted in "Mies van der Rohe: The Art of Structure," "the structure of a brick wall begins already with the smallest divisible unit: the brick." Through a detached and meticulously crafted wall, this fundamental unit is transferred to the Pavilion in order to emphasize the relationship between structure, materiality, and beauty.
