Curated by Maite Borjabad, David Hartt’s Seven Portraits is a portfolio of photographs of seven contemporary buildings across the Americas including renowned projects like the Seattle Library by Rem Koolhaas, the 1111 Lincoln Road by Herzog & de Meuron, Restaurante Mestizo by Smiljan Radic and Residencia Altamira by Rafael Iglesia among others.
The portfolio was first published as a magazine supplement to celebrate the inaugural Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize, commissioned by the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture in partnership with the architecture and design magazine PIN-UP. Hartt visited the buildings with one of the magazine’s editors. The booklet presented Hartt’s photographs alongside texts and interviews that capture their experiences. As a unique commission for the Art Institute of Chicago, Hartt produced twelve large panels of photographs (including both published and unpublished images), entitled Seven Portraits (Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize, PIN-UP Fall Winter 2014/15 Supplement).
Hartt brings a view of those buildings very emancipated from the architects design predictions and desires, and precisely emphasizes the ordinary and the unexpected – a plant growing in the crack of a deck flooring, what it looks like to open a door, or a building facade becoming the background of a quinicañera’s photoshoot.
My building, Your Design brings together this dichotomy between the projected ambitions of the architects and the daily experiences of those buildings and the cultural and social implications within its most immediate built environment. Thus the exhibition unfolds as two exhibitions in one. Over the white finished side of tall slim walls, the large photographic panels by the artist are displayed accompanied by excerpts of the commentary from the magazine. On the corresponding back side of each of those walls, and exposing its construction, original materials from the different studios reveal each architect’s process and ambitions for each project.
This exhibition thus pairs the subjective and fragmented encounters of a building by its inhabitants with the architects’ idealized visions to prompt reflection on how our experiences of a building and its design become a new story—sometimes far, sometimes close, from the architects’ predictions but equally relevant.
List of works presented in the exhibition:
Seven Portraits (Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize, PIN-UP Fall Winter 2014/15 Supplement) by David Hartt
Bloch Building, Nelson-Atkins Museum (Kansas City, Missouri) by Steven Holl
Capilla del Retiro (Auco, Chile) by Undurraga Devés Arquitectos
1111 Lincoln Road (Miami, Florida) by Herzog & de Meuron
Fundação Iberê Camargo (Porto Alegre, Brazil) by Álvaro Siza
Residencia Altamira (Rosario, Argentina) by Rafael Iglesia
Mestizo Restaurant (Santiago, Chile) by Smiljan Radic
The Seattle Central Library (Seattle, Washington) by OMA and LMN
David Hartt biography:
David Hartt (b. 1967, Montréal) is a visual artist who investigates the specificity of place and the cultural and social complexities of the built environment. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at The Art Institute of Chicago; the Graham Foundation, Chicago; LAXART, Los Angeles; and Or Gallery, Vancouver. His work is in the public collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Additionally, his work has been included in several group exhibitions including Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015 at The Museum of Modern Art, America Is Hard to See at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Shine a light/Surgir de l’ombre: Canadian Biennial at the National Gallery of Canada. Hartt is the recipient of a 2015 Foundation for Contemporary Art Grant. In 2012 he was named a United States Artists Cruz Fellow and in 2011 he received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. Hartt is represented by Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago; David Nolan Gallery, New York; and Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin.
Title
Last weekend to visit "My Building | Your Design Seven Portraits By David Hartt" at The Art Institute of ChicagoType
ExhibitionWebsite
From
September 29, 2018 10:00 AMUntil
February 03, 2019 05:00 PMVenue
The Art Institute of ChicagoAddress
