Graphic design by Alejandro Olávarri, 2023
The MAK Center for Art and Architecture is pleased to present Seeking Zohn, an exhibition of works by Mexican-Austrian architect and engineer Alejandro Zohn (1930-2000) through contemporary photography and design. The exhibition takes as subject Zohn’s robust civic and commercial architecture built in Guadalajara from the 1950s to the 1990s, with an interest in how the city’s social, cultural, and material histories are interwoven with his structures.
Commissioned photography and video by artists Adam Wiseman, Lake Verea, Onnis Luque, Sonia Madrigal, and Zara Pfeifer veer from the documentary conceit of architectural photography toward the subjective. This work is decidedly interpretive, seeking out the many narratives contained within parks, markets, collective housing, malls, and bureaucratic buildings. Zohn, a Jewish emigree who fled Vienna during World War II at the age of 8, dedicated his career to creating a modern Guadalajara. Through these photographs—acts of investigation and translation—we find glimpses of his utopian desire amidst the chaos, beauty, and violence of everyday life.
Seeking Zohn is the first presentation of Zohn’s architecture in Los Angeles. The transposition of his work to L.A. places it in dialogue with R.M. Schindler’s designs. As both architects are Jewish émigrés, a parallel exists between the Austrian-Mexican and the Austrian-Angeleno’s experiences. The installation at the MAK Center creates a resonant triangulation between three cities: Vienna, Guadalajara, and Los Angeles. Billboards placed in the garden navigate between the urban scale of Zohn’s buildings and the intimacy of the Schindler House. Household objects designed by Studio Fabien Cappello and fabricated by artisans in Guadalajara build a bridge between the civic and domestic realms.
As a practitioner, Zohn is a lesser-known figure outside of Mexico, and his work has yet to be widely published or exhibited in the United States. A generation after fellow Guadalajara-born architect Luis Barragán and Mexican-Spanish architect Félix Candela, much of Zohn’s architecture aligns with late modernism, a period that’s recently come under re-evaluation. With this consideration comes an expansion of the conventional parallels drawn between Los Angeles and Mexico, which often focuses on designs and actors associated with midcentury modernism. While Zohn’s early career shows the influence of Candela’s thin-shell concrete arches, which he called “cascarones,” his later designs are marked by expressive structural gestures, forming a singular geometric vocabulary that carries from project to project and a sensitivity to the social conditions of the urban fabric.
Notable projects in Seeking Zohn include his most famous building, Mercado Libertad–San Juan de Dios (1958-9), an indoor public market first proposed as his thesis project; the bandshell Concha Acústica (1958) in Parque Agua Azul; Unidad Deportiva Adolfo López Mateos (1956-59) sports center; the mall and parking garage Edificio Mulbar (1973-74); CTM-Atemajac (1977-79), a collective housing project; and one of his final works, Archivo del Estado de Jalisco (1985-91), a state office building and archive. Artists were each assigned a site for photographic inquiry, and the results suggest an architecture bound to the stories and conditions of an evolving city. These works are accompanied by select images, publications, and artifacts from Zohn’s archive, courtesy of his daughter, Diana Zohn Cevallos.
Artists
onnis luque, mexico city
Onnis Luque is an architectural photographer who studied architecture at The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). His work has been published in various magazines such as Domus, Arquine, MONU, Architectural Digest, and PLOT and has been included in several architectural biennials and competitions. His book, USF / DF Appropriation Tactics (CONACULTA / Ediciones Acapulco 2014), documents several years of photographing the Santa Fe Housing Unit in his native home of Mexico City.
Adam Wiseman, Mexico City/London
Adam Wiseman (Mexico City 1970) is a graduate of the International Center of Photography in New York and a former printer at Magnum Photos. His relationship to photojournalism has marked his distinctive career. Wiseman’s subjects are interposed with his understanding of image as something between document and intersubjectivity. He is a Senior Lecturer at the University of East London and divides his time between Mexico City and London, giving lectures and workshops while developing new work.
Lake Verea, Mexico City
Lake Verea is an artist duet formed in 2005 by Francisca Rivero-Lake and Carla Verea. Their work explores concepts of expanded photography through installation, textile, performance, sculpture, and video. By experimenting with photographic techniques and formats that blur questions of authorship, they build narratives that highlight their combined identity to create intimate portraits of architecture, artists’ archives, and people. They’ve poured through the archives of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, architect Luis Barragán, and German émigrés Josef and Anni Albers, amongst others. Lake Verea’s 2011-2018 “Paparazza Moderna” project explores the idea of architecture as a living being through portraits of single-family houses designed by modernist architects Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Richard Neutra, Rudolph M. Schindler, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Philip Johnson.
sonia madrigal, mexico
Sonia Madrigal lives and works in Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl. Her work explores different visual narratives that reflect on personal and collective concepts of gender, the body, violence, and territory, with a locational focus on the East Metropolitan Zone of Mexico City. She is part of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte/National System of Art Creators (FONCA). In 2018, she participated in the XVIII Biennial of Photography of the Centro de la Imagen. She was awarded a residency at the Encuentro de Colectivos de Geografía Crítica y Geografías Autónomas (Ecuador, 2019). Madrigal has participated in exhibitions across Latin America, Europe, and the US and published her work in Harper's, Aperture, and The Guardian.
zara pfeifer
Zara Pfeifer is an artist based in Vienna and Berlin whose work is concerned with the social phenomena of large-scale infrastructure. Her documentation of the modernist housing project Alterlaa (“Du, meine konkrete Utopie,” 2013-17) and her series on truck drivers (“Good Street!,” 2018-2022) involves extended periods of immersion in the day-to-day life of her subjects. She has worked with institutions, including the MAK Center in Los Angeles and the Austrian Cultural Forum in Berlin. Her publications include Monocle, ZEITmagazin, and Monopol, and she has received a studio grant at ISCP New York from the Austrian Federal Government. Her book ICC Berlin was published in 2022 by Jovis Verlag. Pfeifer studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and photography at the Friedl Kubelka School for Artistic Photography in Vienna. She holds lecturing positions at the Technical University Vienna and the Technical University Berlin.
STUDIO FABIEN CAPPELLO
Fabien Cappello (France, 1984) is a furniture and product designer. He studied at the University of Art and Design (ECAL) in Lausanne, Switzerland and obtained a master’s degree in Design Products at the Royal College of Art in London in 2009 under the tutelage of Martino Gamper and Jurgen Bey. Estudio Fabien Cappello is a spacial and furniture firm currently based in Guadalajara, Jalisco, after four years in Mexico City. The design studio’s work is part of the permanent collection at SFMOMA, The Denver Museum of Contemporary Art, and the National Centre for the Arts (CNAP) in Paris, France. Cappello’s work shares a high consideration for craft techniques and industrial production, reflecting design through people and their interactions with space, environment, and material culture.
Seeking Zohn is curated by Los Angeles–based critic and curator Mimi Zeiger and Mexico City–based collaborative practice Tony Macarena: Lorena Canales and Alejandro Olávarri.
Thursday, May 11, 2023
12:00—1:00 pm
Thursday, June 1, 2023
12:00—1:00 pm
Seeking Zohn is made possible, in part, with generous support from the City of West Hollywood, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Pasadena Art Alliance, the Los Angeles City Department of Cultural Affairs, Ago Projects, the Austrian Consulate General Los Angeles, Plant Material, and University of East London Production Support.
