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The exhibition

'Half the room - twice the art (more or less)'

by Horst Kiechle at the Geelong Art Gallery comments on the tension between art and the architecture surrounding it.

Generally art decorates architecture - unless it is a building for displaying art, in which case - the architecture becomes a neutral white box so as not to detract from the art. The Richardson Gallery with its chamfered corners, rounded cornices and plum-red walls is from an earlier era when art and architecture aimed to compliment each other.

For this particular installation I placed an artwork into the center of the room and subjected both the room and the artwork to a series of digital manipuluations:
In utilising computer technologies it is possible to construct objects suggesting the highly curved qualities of traditional sculptural processes. Thus the bright red object in the centre of the gallery is the result of computer simulations used to produce the exhibition at the Darren Knight Gallery in Sydney. By taking this object out of its context and by placing it into the Richardson Gallery a certain tension is created between the art and the surrounding architecture. The room, asserting its influence, clamps down onto the art, whereas the art carves out its own area of influence well beyond its physical boundaries. Somewhere - halfway - the shapes intersect and generate volumes bearing the marks of both geometries. The resulting monolithic block has been reduced to a number of segments hinting at the existing tensions without dominating either art nor architecture.

installation rationale

rendered proposal images

construction images

documentation images

Installation at the

Geelong Art Gallery
Victoria, Australia

23 September
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13 October 2000

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with the support of
Visy Specialties
and
Sydney Vislab

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