ESAP faculty member and CEAA researcher Jorge Palinhos was invited to participate in the Spaces without drama or surface is an illusion, but so is depth, which takes place between February 16 and July 1 at the Graham Foundation in Chicago.
Jorge Palinhos is the only guest playwright, and presents the play At Rise that explores the dramatic potentialities of multiple imaginary scenography. Jorge Palinhos is also a PI of Dramatic Architectures project, which takes place within the framework of the Architecture Studies Group of the Arnaldo Araújo Research Center and the Autonomous Section of Theory and History of ESAP.
Spaces without drama or surface is an illusion, but so is depth is an exhibition that examines the recent proliferation of collage in architectural representation in relationship to scenography and theatrical set design. Based on historical references such as nineteenth-century toy theaters, as well as twentieth-century models such as Aldo Rossi’s Little Scientific Theater, David Hockney’s stage design for the Magic Flute, and projects by Emilio Ambasz, and Charles Moore, this project invites contemporary practitioners to rethink the ways in which architecture is created in relationship to theatricality and how it oscillates between reality and scenography to answer questions about space, depth, context, façade, and representation.
Featuring work by architects Emilio Ambasz, baukuh, Gerardo Caballero, fala atelier, Marcelo Ferraz, Sam Jacob Studio, Johnston Marklee, Monadnock, Charles Moore, MOS Architects, Norman Kelley, OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen, Cecilia Puga, Aldo Rossi, Taller de Arquitectura Mauricio Rocha + Gabriela Carrillo, Pezo Von Ellrichshausen; and artists Pablo Bronstein, David Hockney, William Leavitt, Silke Otto-Knapp, Gabriel Sierra, Batia Suter; and dramaturg Jorge Palinhos; Spaces without drama investigates the similarities between theatrical stage sets and architectural scale models, highlighting the ways that each constructed landscape anticipates narratives and prompts the personal drama of speculation and the creation of fictions. In both cases, the resulting spatial experience is controlled and precisely framed with a fixed relation between observer and object—an architectural imaginary that is more graphic composition than spatial creation, more image than space. By superimposing fragments, forms and elements within a given stage set, the model of the theater allows the participants to rehearse the laws of artistic creation itself. As Aldo Rossi states about the theater in A Scientific Autobiography: “Inside it, nothing can be accidental, yet nothing can be permanently resolved either.”
LIGA, Space for Architecture is an experimental exhibition-oriented platform in Mexico City that has focused its efforts on displaying emerging and influential Latin-American–based practices since its founding in 2011 by Carlos Bedoya, Ruth Estévez, Wonne Ickx, Victor Jaime, and Abel Perles. Following on the Graham Foundation’s multi-year grant support of LIGA’s program, Spaces without drama is the result of an invitation by the Graham to LIGA to develop an exhibition for the Foundation in Chicago. For this collaboration, LIGA founding directors Wonne Ickx and Ruth Estévez have developed a curated investigation into contemporary issues of spatial representation and performance and have taken the opportunity to expand their focus beyond Latin America to include practices from Europe and the United States.