Luisa Lambri
dal 18/3/2004 al 27/6/2004
Segnalato da
18/3/2004
Luisa Lambri
Menil Collection, Houston
An imperceptive first glance might see in Lambri's photographs of architectural interiors another example of the austere, depopulated spaces found in so much of today's photo-based work. The Menil Collection commissioned Lambri to photograph the home designed by Philip Johnson for John and Dominique de Menil in 1949. These photographs will be presented along with a selection of other works from the artist's previously unpublished projects
An imperceptive first glance might see in Luisa Lambri's photographs of architectural interiors another example of the austere, depopulated spaces found in so much of today's photo-based work. They are, however, eminently different in both conception and execution, at once deeply personal and ethereal, rather than wholly impartial and concrete; they are suffused with a delicacy and intimacy that is diametrically opposed to the stark realism found in the works of artists such as Thomas Ruff and Candida Höfer. Since Lambri initiated what has become a sustained engagement with architecture and photography in 1997, she has endeavored to strike a subtle balance between objectivity and subjectivity, creating interpretations of spaces rather than documents of them, eliciting something minimal, abstract, and nonspecific that is imprinted by memory and desire.
Born in Como, Italy, in 1969, Lambri never attended art school and instead studied languages and literature at universities in Milan and Bologna. She began to take pictures while traveling and soon discovered an affinity for the geometrically simple voids of modernist architecture. In her work with these spare interiors, Lambri developed an infatuation with architecture, memory, and perception, exploring through photographs how these celebrated spaces provoke a broad range of emotional, visceral, and intellectual responses that are often separate from the buildings' august historical positions. Since then, her inventory of projects has grown to include sites such as Le Corbusier's apartment blocks in Chandigarh, India (1997) and Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion (2001).
The Menil Collection commissioned Lambri to photograph the home designed by Philip Johnson for John and Dominique de Menil in 1949. These photographs will be presented along with a selection of other works from the artist's previously unpublished projects, including Richard Neutra's Strathmore Apartments in Los Angeles, Oscar Niemeyer's Casa das Canoas and Banco Boavista in Rio de Janeiro, and the Palacio dos Arcos (do Itamaraty) in BrasÃlia, Brazil.
Menil Collection
1515 Sul Ross Houston, Texas 77006
Museum Hours:
Wednesday – Sunday, 11:00 am to 7:00 pm