Abstract
Exhibition dates 05/11/2011—10/2013
PROGETTO LIRA HOTEL is a project curated by Jonathan Monk and Sonia Rosso. As part of this project Scott Myles was invited to produce a design for a room to be installed at Sonia Rosso. The resulting room is titled Displaced Façade (Hotel for Sonia Rosso).
Myles' design makes reference to the de-architecture of the SITE architectural practice, specifically, the ‘BEST Cutler Ridge showroom’ built in Miami in 1979. With a brick wall separated into three segmented parts, each part is successively reduced to create a private bedroom chamber concealing the bed. The result is something akin to a Russian Doll, a motif representing the family unit in descending scale. The installation reflects Myles’ interest in sculptural forms and ascribed meanings where in this instance, simple, repeated building blocks are linked both to architecture and child’s play. The collective parts of the three walls line up to give the illusion of one wall, uninterrupted. However, when viewed at an angle, the successive reductions disengage and stand freely in the space, disjointing it, creating a space that is layered, both in form and function, where what was one wall, apparently complete and without fault, reveals three walls, each incomplete, in a state of potential ruin. Such deconstruction exists not only in postmodern architectural practices like SITE, but also for example, in many earlier meditations upon ruins in the paintings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Joseph Gandy, the latter of which was commissioned by Sir John Soane in 1830 to depict his building for the Bank of England as a ruin of the future, both premeditating the inevitable fall of the British Empire and elevating the building as a masterpiece on a par with buildings from the time of the Roman Empire. Looking forward by looking back.
Along with the perfunctionary bed, furnishing the hotel room will be a desk unit and a single shelf from Deiter Rams' 606 Universal Shelving System, coupled with a chair from the gallery. Seen as the epitome of ‘good design’ Myles chose the Rams pieces for their materiality and his liking of them as purely functional pieces of furniture. Reciprocity on Three Planes (2009), a screenprint on paper, reveals Myles’ interest in sculptural or built space and co-dependency, a co-dependency that is highlighted by the varying relationships within the project: that there is an implicit relationship between the artist Myles, the commissioner Rosso and the guest who chooses to stay. The role of the project space and that of the artist within it is complicated here because economic considerations are not the only factors to bear. In The Gift, Lewis Hyde writes:
"In antiquity the Roman familia was not simply people but the entire 'household', including the objects in the home down to the food and the means of livelihood. Later Roman law, however, increasingly distinguished economic and ritual interest; it divided the familia into res and personae, into things and persons, and in so doing, ‘passed beyond that antiquated and dangerous gift economy, encumbered by personal considerations, incompatible with the development of the market, trade and productivity - which was, in a word, uneconomic'."
In summation, Myles presents a contemplative and thoughtful space, one that is a site of exchange. Myles proposes Displaced Façade (Hotel for Sonia Rosso) as an artwork and container in which the guest will become a performative participant in an installation that also happens to be a perfectly functional hotel room.
PROGETTO LIRA HOTEL is a project curated by Jonathan Monk and Sonia Rosso. As part of this project Scott Myles was invited to produce a design for a room to be installed at Sonia Rosso. The resulting room is titled Displaced Façade (Hotel for Sonia Rosso).
Myles' design makes reference to the de-architecture of the SITE architectural practice, specifically, the ‘BEST Cutler Ridge showroom’ built in Miami in 1979. With a brick wall separated into three segmented parts, each part is successively reduced to create a private bedroom chamber concealing the bed. The result is something akin to a Russian Doll, a motif representing the family unit in descending scale. The installation reflects Myles’ interest in sculptural forms and ascribed meanings where in this instance, simple, repeated building blocks are linked both to architecture and child’s play. The collective parts of the three walls line up to give the illusion of one wall, uninterrupted. However, when viewed at an angle, the successive reductions disengage and stand freely in the space, disjointing it, creating a space that is layered, both in form and function, where what was one wall, apparently complete and without fault, reveals three walls, each incomplete, in a state of potential ruin. Such deconstruction exists not only in postmodern architectural practices like SITE, but also for example, in many earlier meditations upon ruins in the paintings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Joseph Gandy, the latter of which was commissioned by Sir John Soane in 1830 to depict his building for the Bank of England as a ruin of the future, both premeditating the inevitable fall of the British Empire and elevating the building as a masterpiece on a par with buildings from the time of the Roman Empire. Looking forward by looking back.
Along with the perfunctionary bed, furnishing the hotel room will be a desk unit and a single shelf from Deiter Rams' 606 Universal Shelving System, coupled with a chair from the gallery. Seen as the epitome of ‘good design’ Myles chose the Rams pieces for their materiality and his liking of them as purely functional pieces of furniture. Reciprocity on Three Planes (2009), a screenprint on paper, reveals Myles’ interest in sculptural or built space and co-dependency, a co-dependency that is highlighted by the varying relationships within the project: that there is an implicit relationship between the artist Myles, the commissioner Rosso and the guest who chooses to stay. The role of the project space and that of the artist within it is complicated here because economic considerations are not the only factors to bear. In The Gift, Lewis Hyde writes:
"In antiquity the Roman familia was not simply people but the entire 'household', including the objects in the home down to the food and the means of livelihood. Later Roman law, however, increasingly distinguished economic and ritual interest; it divided the familia into res and personae, into things and persons, and in so doing, ‘passed beyond that antiquated and dangerous gift economy, encumbered by personal considerations, incompatible with the development of the market, trade and productivity - which was, in a word, uneconomic'."
In summation, Myles presents a contemplative and thoughtful space, one that is a site of exchange. Myles proposes Displaced Façade (Hotel for Sonia Rosso) as an artwork and container in which the guest will become a performative participant in an installation that also happens to be a perfectly functional hotel room.
Original language | English |
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Place of Publication | Turin |
Publisher | Sonia Rosso |
Media of output | Other |
Publication status | Published - 2011 |