Veronika Kellndorfer at the National Museum in Oslo, Norway
January 15, 2017
Kota Ezawa, Chez Tortoni, 2015, duratrans transparency and LED lightbox, 10 x 13 inches, 25.5 x 33 cm, edition of 5, with 2 AP
On January 27th, the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo, Norway will present, Casa de Vidro, a retrospective exhibition for architect Lina Bo Bardi featuring Veronika Kellndorfer. The exhibition will present Lina Bo Bardi's iconic glasshouse in São Paulo (Casa de Vidro, 1950–1951) inside Sverre Fehn's glass pavilion (2008), inviting a dialogue between the two architects, who despite having never met and having spent their lives on opposite sides of the world, find a surprising amount of common ground. The exhibition will also feature an installation by Veronika Kellndorfer, including Treehouse (Casa de Vidro), as well as a site specific installation that evokes Bo Bardi’s glass house using artistic means.
Among the similarities to be found between the two architects are their mutual sculptural uses of reinforced concrete, their long-standing commitments to rehabilitation projects and adaptive re-use, and a shared interest in the careful integration of their designs into the surrounding landscape. The latter can be seen most prominently in both architects' incorporation of trees into their projects – Fehn in the Nordic Pavilion in Venice and Bo Bardi in Casa de Vidro.
The exhibition will also incorporate a dialogue between the architectural idioms of Bo Bardi and Fehn and the visual language of Veronika Kellndorfer. In an installation commissioned for the exhibition, Kellndorfer will present transformed and rasterized photographs of Casa de Vidro silkscreened onto enormous glass panels, which reference the heavy use of glass in both iconic buildings. The installation will also include a sculptural re-enactment of Casa de Vidro’s suspended patio at a scale of 1:2.
Casa de Vidro is curated by Markus Richter and will run from January 27th through May 17th, 2017.