FOG ART WRAPS PHILIP JOHNSON’S GLASS HOUSE
New Canaan (United States) (AFP) – Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya spent a year painstakingly recording and examining climate data as she studied approaches to shroud architect Philip Johnson’s Glass House in fog.
In the end, she largely gave up on the concept of precisely calibrating the fog and rather let nature take its course and shape the mist.
“Nature is the mold and wind sculpts it. To let it tell its personal story is the whole point,” Nakaya stated in an interview.
“But that’s just half of the story. You should get inside the fog and experience it physically. It is a most major knowledge. It liberates your sense, your imagination.”
The octogenarian artist has crafted sculptures out of fog around the planet for the past 45 years, wrapping fields, forests, children’s play parks and public plazas in fine mist.
She shapes the intangible formations making use of nozzles calibrated to respond to local conditions such as winds and humidity.
But this project, her initial massive-scale installation on the US East Coast, was diverse.
The iconic Modernist pavilion sits atop a promontory overlooking a valley and a pond with views extending to the forest beyond.
It is a excellent viewpoint to take in the landscape, itself cautiously pruned and shaped according to Johnson’s vision, despite its deceptively wild appearance.
“The beauty was ineffable — great,” Nakaya stated. “I wanted to be in the orchestra performing in tune with the wind, and to bring the complete valley alive to resonate with the landscape.
“It was like Philip Johnson was conducting nature’s symphony from up there!”
The constructing sits on 47 acres (19 hectares) of farmland that Johnson converted into a canvas for a variety of architectural projects built over the much better component of six decades.
Constructed in 1949 in New Canaan, Connecticut, the Glass Home served as a weekend trip retreat for Johnson and his partner, art dealer David Whitney.
The architect, who designed landmarks like the Museum of Contemporary Art’s sculpture garden in New York, lived in the see-through structure full-time for the last three years of his life until his death in 2005.
- Marriage of opposites -
Like Nakaya’s mist, the Glass House blends into the rocky, tree-lined landscape. The outcome is a marriage of opposites.
Only with the fog, made from fresh water pumped into 603 nozzles for about ten minutes each and every hour, does the Glass Residence temporarily quit bringing the outdoors indoors.
The visible — the home — all of a sudden becomes invisible and the invisible — wind — becomes visible.
Echoing the concept of “protected danger” located across Johnson’s estate, such as his narrow and wobbly Eyebrow Bridge, the fog engulfing visitors is a disorienting expertise.
At occasions it is so dense that even one’s own hands disappear. When walking outside the residence in the course of misty spells, visitors must hold the railing or danger tumbling into the valley.
But just as swiftly, the mist vanishes.
The ancient Japanese regarded fog to be the supply of life.
“It was a principal encounter and I want to restore and share this sensibility,” Nakaya stated.
At 1st, Nakaya was hesitant to set up her installation at the “nearly sacred” Glass Residence.
“What I avoided was the stage effect, the focusing of attention, which in the finish turned out to be needless. Nature took care of it,” she said.
On a man-created pond below the house sits Johnson’s Lake Pavilion (1962), exactly where guests sat beneath the gold-leafed ceiling during lunch parties, with a fountain blowing mist.
An architectural folly, it is smaller sized in scale than equivalent pavilions and hence seems additional away when viewed from the Glass Property.
Johnson place guests up in the Glass House’s mirror opposite, the opaque Brick Residence. The two structures are linked by a grassy court and separated by a swimming pool.
Nakaya’s exhibition, which runs by means of November 30, coincides with the 65th anniversary of the Glass Home.
Her function is rarely shown in the United States, though she has collaborated with Americans such as choreographer Trisha Brown, video artist Bill Viola and the Experiments in Art and Technologies collective.
The Veil was so well-liked among the 15,000 guests touring the Glass Property this year that the internet site is contemplating getting the installation permanently, though no final selection has been made.
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