How do we inhabit the spaces we inherit? As a contemporary institution stewarding three historic Schindler sites, MAK Center’s mission and work encompasses a broad set of approaches to our sites, spaces, and places, often entangled with both past and present concerns: critical and experimental exhibition-making, arts and architecture organizing and pedagogy, critical preservation practices, site stewardship and climate awareness.

Every institution is a proposition, on how we understand and define art and architecture, how we inhabit preservation and heritage sites, how we uphold cultural values, how we organize resources and relations across constituencies, and most importantly, how we engage with one another’s ideas and processes. 

Yet institutions are also notoriously slow moving, bureaucratic machines. The act of changing perspectives, attitudes, and conduct runs counter to the longevity and repetition of systems often developed to make institutions work. Such systems also demand invisible forms of labor not evident in the economy of exhibitions and events that institutions put forward. 

Reorientations invites dialogue between artists, architects, and cultural experts and MAK Center in order to address such forms of institutional labor and collaborative practice, beyond the public presentation of projects and work, with the aim of cultivating porosity and permeability within administrative and care-taking practices of the institution and its publics.

ABOUT SUBJECT STUDIES

Subject Studies is a new annual program series offering practical and non-practical public engagements, initiated by the MAK Center for Art and Architecture. The program series brings together artists, architects, public intellectuals, scholars, students, and cultural and political leaders to exchange dialogue on social values, methods and thought relevant to contemporary issues in art and architecture. The term “subject” implies a topic or field of knowledge studied or taught in traditional educational settings such as schools, colleges, or universities; it also implies a personhood situated in systems of power, whether institutional, economic, or material, and a consciousness of experience. Subject Studies embraces this possibility of multiple definitions, asking how knowledge, institutions and personhood intersect and are negotiated.

JIA YI GU

Jia Yi Gu is a curator, scholar, and exhibition-maker working at the intersections of art and architecture. Her work focuses on histories of knowledge production and display practices across disciplines, with an emphasis on objects, exhibitions, and representational histories. Over the past decade, she has developed a pedagogical and curatorial practice centering on research-based exhibitions and the production of situations and environments, alongside the critique and transformation of institutional practices. She is director of MAK Center for Art and Architecture and co-director of Spinagu.

ROSARIO TALEVI

Rosario Talevi is a Berlin-based architect, curator, editor and educator interested in critical spatial practice (Rendell), transformative pedagogies and feminist futures. Her work advances architecture as a form of agency – in its transformative sense and in its capacity for acting otherwise (Schneider) and as a form of care – one that provides the political stakes to repair our broken world (Tronto). Rosario is a founding member of Soft Agency, a diasporic group of female architects, artists, curators, scholars and writers working with spatial practices and Floating e.V., the non-for-profit association organising, programming and maintaining Floating University in Berlin. She was Guest Professor of Social Design (2021-22) at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (HFBK) in Hamburg. Currently, she is a fellow at the Thomas Mann Haus in Los Angeles, California.

This program is supported in part by the Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles (DCA), PICE AC/E's Programme for the Internationalization of Spanish Culture and Thomas Mann House.

Image Credit: TAKK Architecture.

Sagadin and Kiyomi Gork engage in a collaborative-method of work-creation and installation, presenting new responsive sculptural and sound works for Garage Exchange.

Sagadin produces a new series of wall-hung architectural paper works testing the spatial and symbolic relationship between two-and three-dimensional urbanism. Advertising posters are overpainted, glued and reinforced with aluminum foil. Paper is weathered and folded and hung into fixed shapes referencing elements of the city—blinds, curtains, air conditioning units, railings, rain gutters, or fountains. The shiny aluminum juxtaposed the old and weathered painted posters, mirroring the colors to amplify past visions of the future and rays of light for warmth. These text-less color fields obfuscate the poster’s informational function, drawing attention instead to recirculation, recycling, and impermanence. Small objects playfully emphasize the surrounding context.

Kiyomi Gork continues their attenuator series of soft sculptures, designed to absorb unwanted sound in a space. Previously the attenuator sculptures have taken the form of figurative and geological large scale objects. The new works take an architectural focus in the form of tall wool columns stretching from the floor to ceiling. 

The sculptures’ material properties complement a responsive sound work Kiyomi Gork fabricated on-site for the exhibition. Microphones in the Garage Top’s stairwell record noises made by the outdoor environment and visitors entering the space. The sound is then projected and echoed into the shared gallery, further activating the site and interacting with both of the artist’s sculptural works– amplified and softened at the same time. 

ABOUT GARAGE EXCHANGE

Garage Exchange seeks to foster relationships, conversations and collaborations in the arts between Los Angeles and Austria. In order to expand the cultural exchange at the core of the Artists and Architects-in-Residence program, The Austrian Federal Chancellery, and the MAK Center invite Austrian and Vienna-based alumni residents to collaborate with L.A. artists and architects of their choosing at the Garage Top at the Mackey Apartments for the Garage Exchange Vienna-Los Angeles exhibition series.

Artists

Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork

Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork (born: 1982, Long Beach, CA) has been working with the intersection of sound, sculpture and performance since 2002. She studied sound art, photography and new genres at the San Francisco Art Institute and researched the history of communication technologies, acoustics and computer music at Stanford University where she received an MFA. 

Kiyomi Gork has had solo exhibitions at François Ghebaly, New York; Empty Gallery in Hong Kong; The Lab and Queens Nails Projects in San Francisco and 356 Mission Rd in Los Angeles. She has been a part of group exhibitions at the Hammer Museum, GES-VAC in Moscow, SFMOMA and Sculpture Center, New York. Kiyomi Gork has participated in residencies at Skowhegan, EMPAC, Mills College and Schloss Solitude in addition to receiving multiple grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission, Center for Cultural Innovation, Joan Mitchell Foundation and LACMA Art+Tech Grant. 

Performances have included multiple collaborations with Laetitia Sonami, the collective 0th and solo projects. 

Kiyomi Gork identifies as a mixed race queer fem (she/they) whose family came to the US, four generations ago from Okinawa (Ryukyu Islands), Japan and Eastern Europe. She was born and raised in Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Maruša Sagadin

Maruša Sagadin was born in 1978 in Ljubljana (Slovenia) and is based in Vienna (Austria). She studied architecture at TU Graz before transitioning to performative arts and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. In 2015/2016, she participated in the ISCP Grant in New York City (USA), and in 2010, she was awarded the Schindler Grant at the MAK – Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles (USA). From 2011 – 2017 she was Assistant Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, in the department for Performative Arts and Sculpture.

Her recent and upcoming exhibitions include Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt, Germany), Museum of Applied Arts (Vienna, Austria), Cukrarna Galleries (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Christine König Gallery in Vienna, Vestjyllands Kunstpavillon (Videbæk, Denmark), SPACE London (London, United Kingdom), NADA (NYC, USA), Austrian Cultural Forum New York (NYC, USA, Warsaw), Syndicate (Cologne, Germany), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna, Austria), Neue Galerie (Innsbruck, Austria), Museum of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Belvedere21 (Vienna, Austria), Grazer Kunstverein (Graz, Austria), and Room of Requirement/Horse & Pony Fine Arts (Berlin, Germany). Her both monographs „Maruša Sagadin - ©MMXV“ (Verlag für Moderne Kunst, Vienna), 2016 and „A Happy Hippie“ (Spector Books, Leipzig), 2021 were finalist for Schönste Bücher Österreichs, a prize for books made in Austria from any discipline.

Maruša Sagadin's work is built on the connections and collisions between sculpture, architecture, urban space, gender and language. 

Maruša Sagadins sculptures touch on playfulness, imagination, and the pop-cultural accessibility of postmodern art, while working with the motif of the body, its form, its needs, and the care it requires – both the body of the particular viewer they are concerned about (and whom they provide with seating), and the human body as the universal measure of all sculpture. The nature of Maruša Sagadin’s work is neither typical nor unusual for feminist aesthetics – it is one of its many forms. (Vit Havránek)

Maruša Sagadin roams through a pop-cultural canon of urban countercultures, feminist and queer theory and modernist architecture. The compact materiality of her sculptures might be anchored in the visual language of a macho legacy of 20th-century modernism, yet she casually juggles around with these seemingly heavyweight concepts as if they were weightless, not unlike DC Comics’ Wonder Woman. Her critical reappraisal of slacker and skater cultures in correlation to a feminist artistic identity seeks for visual representation within these urban constructs, visualizing the city as a container of architectural memory – a map formed of concrete that only fully reveals its meaning when read in direct relation to its respective communities. (Hannes Ribarits)

This exhibition series is made possible by The Austrian Federal Chancellery.

Header image: Courtesy of the artists, Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, Empty Gallery HK, and Maruša Sagadin Christine König Galerie, Vienna, 2022.

Photography: Gabriel Bruce, 2022.

The exhibition’s central feature is an installation that reimagines the U.S. Capitol Dome as an inverted, open, and almost unrecognizable structure made of mirror, reflecting back both the environment and itself. Images of the Capitol Dome are continuously propagated by media organizations of all kinds—reproduced on web pages, news broadcasts, and social feeds—as if the building’s image has come to represent structures of power that are otherwise too abstract to locate. The room-sized installation is a container for holding and focusing light and its refractions, becoming a site for reflection on virtual mediation and transparency.

Inverted Dome references historical works of California light and space; augmented realities; architectures of the metaverse; considerations of public and private space; presence and absence; Monument to the Third International by Vladimir Tatlin; cryptography; information theory; and the mediation of power in daily life.

The exhibition includes an installation, a sequence of digital studies released online throughout the duration of the show, and a publication, which together suggest new spatial and experiential possibilities for public architecture.

Inverted Dome, 2022
Mirrored acrylic sheet
71 x 70 x 70 in.

Digital Study #1 (Mirror Chain), 2022
Digital sculpture
Release date: February 10, 2022

Instead of the inverted U.S. Capitol Dome currently installed within the physical gallery, in this virtual world we find a length of mirrored chain that stretches from floor to ceiling. Mirror Chain references both the concept of a blockchain first advanced by Satoshi Nakamoto in Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, and the proliferation of cryptocurrencies that have followed in its wake. One is also invited to consider the phenomena of supply chains, chains that bind, and chains that are worn in popular culture to signal wealth and status.

Digital Study #2 (Azimuth Wave)
Digital sculpture
Release date: February 17, 2022

Azimuth is a type of angular measurement. It establishes an orientation in relation to a point of interest within a spherical coordinate system. The concept is typically used in navigation, mapping, astronomy, and other disciplines.

In everyday speech, a mirror is a surface that reflects back an inverted image of its surrounding environment. Mirrors in our homes are used for self-reflection, in our cars for navigation, and throughout cities as exterior cladding for skyscrapers. More broadly, a mirror is a wave reflector—optical mirrors reflect light waves, but other types of mirrors reflect audio or even atomic waves.

Digital Study #3 (Training Phantom)
Digital sculpture
Release date: February 24, 2022

The following excerpt from an interview between exhibition curator Aurora Tang and artist Kristin Posehn accompanied the digital study release:

TANG: How do you see these digital studies in relation to the physical exhibition?

POSEHN: It's been a back-and-forth evolution. As I was fabricating the sculpture, installing, and then documenting it, I was also 3D modelling the gallery. It was fascinating to be in the gallery and observe how light falls in the space at different times of day, and then go to my studio and juxtapose that with how light was being rendered in the 3D environment I was building. The conversations we've had in the gallery and responses from visitors have brought up new ideas that are filtering into the studies. It's been a way for the work to continue to unfold, respond, and reflect in real time.

Digital Study #4 (Chimera)
Digital sculpture animation
Release date: March 3, 2022

A chimera is an organism composed of multiple tissues with different genetic composition. In Greek mythology, a chimera is a hybrid being — part lion, goat, and snake. As an animation, Digital Study #4 (Chimera) morphs between three states in an infinite loop, reflecting an otherwise unseen backdrop all the while.

Casting Glances with Kristin Posehn: Inverted Dome

An informal listening event, featuring a playlist of audio tracks selected by artists, including: Kathryn Andrews, Scott Benzel. Holly Childs, Steven Chodoriwsky, Alice Könitz, Rita McBride & Glen Rubsamen, Linda Persson, Imogen Stidworthy, Nasrin Tabatabai & Babak Afrassiabi, Peter Wu+, Jayme Yen, and Andros Zins-Browne.

Sunday, February 20, 2022
2:00 PM – 5:00 PM

The Casting Glances Playlist:

Kathryn Andrews — Marking Time by Pauline Anna Strom, 2020, 4:28

Imogen Stidworthy — Telahumo by Nicholas Jaar, 2020, 14:20

Rita McBride & Glen Rubsamen — Tubular Bells Flipped and Reversed, 3:16

Alice Könitz — Petrachus Pot (sound recovered from an urn), :43

Peter Wu+ — Music for 18 Musicians: Pulses II by Steve Reich, 1998, 6:10

Jayme Yen — Smashmouth Playing in a Cave, 3:22

Andros Zins-Browne — Fearless Vampire Killers by Bad Brains, 1982, 1:07

Nasrin Tabatabai & Babak Afrassiabi — Structures for Sound by Francois & Bernard Baschet, 1963, 5:27

Linda Persson — Spirit Animal (original composition), 2022, 12:58

Steven Chodoriwsky — Crater Canticle (original composition), 2022, 2:50

Holly Childs — Meisou (Dark Slumber) by Geinoh Yamashirogumi, 1986, 5:11

Scott Benzel — Pandaemonium (original composition), 2022, 19:07

Publication Release
Schindler House
Friday, April 29, 2022
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Kristin Posehn: Inverted Dome is organized by Aurora Tang. This exhibition is made possible with support from the Pasadena Art Alliance and the MAK Center Patron Program.

Artists

Kristin Posehn

Kristin Posehn is an artist based in Los Angeles. She received a Ph.D. in Sculpture from the Winchester School of Art, Winchester, UK, and held a two-year research and production residency at the Van Eyck, Maastricht, NL. She has taught at Oxford University, Woodbury University, Winchester School of Art, and Duke University. Posehn was awarded the Hermine Van Bers Art Prize in 2009, and has received grants and commissions including from the Bonnefanten Museum, Museum De Paviljoens, Brooklyn Historical Society, and Netwerk Center for Contemporary Art. The Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art maintains a collection of materials from Posehn’s architectural installations, and dedicated a solo show to this work in 2017. Recent exhibits include Manic Castle Hash at Open Wall Salon / Binomial Nomenclature in Los Angeles (2020); and Substrata at EPOCH/Los Angeles Museum of Art (2021).

Inverted Dome is organized by Aurora Tang.

This exhibition is made possible with support from the Pasadena Art Alliance and the MAK Center Patron Program.