Apart from chronological order and conceptual content, RGB+U is a representational framework to recap a series of selected
exhibitions at Storefront for Art and Architecture. Upon approaching the physical space in the mentioned exhibitions, one specific hue becomes the immediate media. The effective visual experience of the
actual show, here becomes a formal curatorial framework for a virtual exhibition. 

Hi-No-Maru (1990-12-18) by Yukinori YanagiStorefront for Art and Architecture Archive

RED

Hi-No-Maru (1990-12-18) by Yukinori YanagiStorefront for Art and Architecture Archive

Hi-No-Maru (1990):

Sculptor Yukinori Yanagi’s installation at Storefront took advantage of the gallery’s triangular shape by hanging mirrors on the converging walls to create the illusion of a circular space. The reflection was layered with colored light reflected from red panels installed on half of the floor and ceiling to symbolize the rising sun.

Hi-No-Maru (1990-12-18) by Yukinori YanagiStorefront for Art and Architecture Archive

The idea of converting linear walls into a circular space has been materialized in this drawing.
The big red circle that symbolizes the sun, is situated at the apex of gallery's triangular shape. This shape emphasizes on the desired curvilinear form, red colored space and reflective stripes. A slice cut out of the conceptual circle has been conveyed and resonated in the gallery space throughout.

Hi-No-Maru (1990-12-18) by Yukinori YanagiStorefront for Art and Architecture Archive

Red panels and reflective panels, installed at the floor and walls of the galley.

Six Square (1999-09-16) by Julia Mandle and Six SquareStorefront for Art and Architecture Archive

Six Square (1999):

Six Square, a site-specific dance performance conceived by the Brooklyn-based experimental arts company J Mandle Performance, turned the space of Storefront inside-out. Dancers manipulated the positions of the rotating facade panels as they navigated between the threshold of the interior and the exterior of the gallery.

103_Newsletter-1Storefront for Art and Architecture Archive

Six Square (1999-09-16) by Julia MandleStorefront for Art and Architecture Archive

This spatial investigation was mirrored in the multi-layered costumes worn by the dancers. Similar to the panels, the costumes were transformed by the dancers throughout the duration of the piece, calling into question the convergence of interior and exterior space, whether physical or psychological. As the performance took over the gallery and sidewalk, the audience was relocated to the street, challenging the traditional experience of viewing a performance.

Ciudad Moderna (2006-05-02/2006-06-10) by Terence GowerStorefront for Art and Architecture Archive

CIUDAD MODERNA (2006):

Shown as a digital video projection, Ciudad Moderna was a composite of clips taken from a popular Mexican film released in 1966. Each film fragment contained images from the 1950s and 60s Mexican Modernist architecture - either interiors, façades, or streetscapes. The source film, Despedida de Casada (Dir. Juan de Orduña), was treated as a document of the contemporary city and re-edited to highlight the architecture of Mexico such as the Museum of Anthropology, the apartment buildings of Avenida de la Reforma, and the Hotel Presidente in Acapulco.

Ciudad Moderna (2006-05-02) by Terence GowerStorefront for Art and Architecture Archive

The clips were interspersed with freeze-frames, each of which captured an image of the architecture in pristine black and white, or dissolved to a perspective rendering similar to an illustration from an architectural monograph. Ciudad Moderna sought to untangle the architecture from the narrative thread of the original film and recompose a story of the city as a built environment

220 Minute Museum (1988-12-12)Storefront for Art and Architecture Archive

GREEN

220 Minute Museum (1998-12-12) by Hani RashidStorefront for Art and Architecture Archive

220 Minute Museum (1998):

The 220 Minute Museums explores the visibility of the museum as a digital environment. The installation uses the physically narrow space of the Storefront gallery in Soho as a springboard into eleven different virtual environments. Each environment could be considered an individual digital museum that fits into a presentation format of 220 minutes.

WORKac: 49 Cities (2009-05-20) by Dan Wood, Amale AndraosStorefront for Art and Architecture Archive

WORKac: 49 Cities (2009):

Recognizing the recurrent nature of our environmental preoccupations and their impact in shaping utopias of the past, 49 cities inscribes our time within a larger historical context, rereading seminal projects and visionary cities of the past through an ecological lens of the present that goes beyond their declared ideology to compare and contrast their hypothetical ecological footprint.

49 cities is a call to re-engage cities as the site of radical thinking and experimentation, moving beyond ‘green building’ towards an embrace of ideas, scale, vision and common sense combined with delirious imagination in the pursuit of empowering questioning and re-invention.”

– Amale Andraos, Dan Wood

Degrees of Paradise, Installation View (1991-09) by Mel ChinStorefront for Art and Architecture Archive

BLUE

Suburbs of Utopia (1994-10-01) by Michael SorkinStorefront for Art and Architecture Archive

Suburbs of Utopia (1994):

In Suburbs of Utopia, Michaels Sorkin explored possibilities for new forms of cities grown from pure suburban habitats. He exhibited projects conceived for four sites—Brooklyn Waterfront, the Souks of Beirut, Tokaj, and Weed, AZ—in which four diverse understandings of utopia were proposed. These proposals were largely inspired by the history of the people and the land they inhabited.

Air Architecture- Wall of Fire (2005-03-08) by Yves KleinStorefront for Art and Architecture Archive

Yves Klein: Air Architecture (2005):

Air Architecture presented, for the first time, Yves Klein’s architectural projects and theories with particular regard for his exploration of the void and its utopian implications as they applied to an immaterial architecture. Relying upon technology and the use of the four elements—air, water, fire and earth—Klein envisioned a world in which man lived in harmony with the natural elements through the mechanisms of Air Architecture.

Air Architecture (2005-03-08) by Yves KleinStorefront for Art and Architecture Archive

Famous for his blue monochromes and provocative performances, Klein had a special interest in architecture as an extension of his practice. With the help of several architects, he designed several projects that were never realized, largely due to his premature death at the age of 34.

1989.01_The Ship_Exhibition Photos_1Storefront for Art and Architecture Archive

UMBER

The Ship (1989-01-18) by Bente StokkeStorefront for Art and Architecture Archive

The Ship (1989):

On the occasion of his exhibition at Storefront, Bente Stokke, a Norwegian artist whose material of choice was ash from a combustion plant, wrote: “my motive for working / lies in the uncovering / of a space / which reveals itself / in shifts and layers of reality.” Stokke’s installations emerged from the confrontation of a found space with an idea concealed in the history of that particular place. At Storefront, this approach resulted in The Ship, a dramatic reappraisal of the gallery’s trademark wedge form. Successive layers of ash applied to the gallery’s walls at its tapering west end evoked the interior space of ship’s bow, referencing the ancient craft and forms of Scandinavian wooden shipbuilding.

Degrees of Paradise, Installation View (1991-03) by Mel ChinStorefront for Art and Architecture Archive

Degrees of Paradise: The State of Heaven (1991):

As questions around humanity’s responsibility towards the natural environment took on added urgency in the early 1990s, Storefront embarked on a series of ecologically-themed exhibitions. To accommodate Mel Chin’s installation The State of Heaven, two triangular spaces were created within the gallery space. In the west end of the gallery, a large hand-knotted carpet floated above the heads of the viewers; its condition represented global meteorological conditions according to data collected by satellites. Throughout the course of the exhibition, the rug was destroyed or repaired to parallel the condition of the ozone layer. In the eastern gallery, a canopy of suspended monitors played back images of meteorological dynamics generated in real time by a fractal program.

Credits: Story

- For more information about mentioned shows in this exhibition, please visit:
- The Ship (1989)
- Hi-No-Maru (1990)
- Degrees of Paradise: The State of Heaven (1991)
- Suburbs of Utopia (1994)
- 220 Minute Museum (1998)
- Six Square (1999)
- Air Architecture (2005)
- Ciudad Moderna (2006)
- WORKac: 49 Cities (2009)

This Google Arts and Culture exhibit is curated by Farnoosh Farmer.

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The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.
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