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- 10 - 19
In conjunction with the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale, A Plus A Gallery presents a collective exhibition titled “The House Electric” that will open to the public on 18 May 2018. The exhibition showcases the work of artists and designers M–L–XL, Jochen Holz and Richard Wheater, developed exclusively for this occasion and shown here for the first time. The exhibition’s title was inspired by Walt Whitman’s 1855 poem “I sing the body electric”, that celebrates the human body as the primary means through which we experience the world, whereby body and soul are seen as equal. The show plays with these themes applying them to the domestic through two key elements: neon light and brass furniture.
Each exhibit on display can be seen as an interpretation of the poem’s emphasis on the sensuality, equality and interconnectedness of body and soul. For this reason, the objects turn the furniture’s structural components into aesthetic and visual elements, where function is left as the main or in some cases only part in what becomes a direct and exposed structure. For example, the elements making up Richard Wheater’s neon installations give equal importance to its parts; the housing of the transformer to celebrate the lights source, ‘umbilical’ electric wire encased in transparent glass. The sensual emphasis on surface and shininess, a central concern of M–L–XL designs, serves to balance the constituent parts of a piece of furniture; legs, bends, joints, seat, surfaces, component colours, feet, where nothing is hidden, but revealed through a visual emphasis on the balance of all the necessary parts. Jochen Holz’s neon light installation and glass objects share an organic, bodily language, limb-like flowing forms, intestinal bulges, elbows, knuckles and tubes, fluffy, cloud coloured light.
While each participating artist will showcase objects that feature a distinctive character, typical of their unique research and approach to design, seen as a whole the exhibition seeks to propose a collective vision of domesticity, with an emphasis on materiality and direct experience of the material world through the senses. In this interpretation, each element of “The House Electric” is a coherent variation of the whole, whose purpose is to celebrate everyday familiar functionality and its tactile, visual and material qualities.
In anticipation of the Biennale the private view will be on 17 May 2018 at 6.30 pm (by invitation only), at A Plus A Gallery, in Calle Malipiero, San Marco 3073.
Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids,
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,
Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the ample side-round of the chest,
Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,
Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-joints, finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
Leg fibres, knee, knee-pain, upper-leg, under-leg,
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body or of any one’s body, male or female (...).
The House Electric
18.5 — 11.08.2018
Preview: 17.05.2018 at 6.30 pm
by invitation only
A plus A Gallery
Works by Jochen Holz, M–L–XL and Richard Wheater
Contacts
A plus A gallery
San Marco 3073, Venezia 30124
www.aplusa.it, info@aplusa.it
Phone +39 041 2770466
Jochen Holz (UK)
His work is essentially rooted in his 25 year experience with glassblowing. While the making process is central to his practice the work is not about a display of skill or techniques, but always guided by the immediacy and materiality of glass. Jochen’s biggest neon installation to date for A plus A Gallery brings together the research of the past few years into oversized borosilicate neon. With the increase in width of the tubing the light also takes on more physical qualities; the light emanates as a volume, rather than as the lines and contours of a traditional neon sign. The forms play with the light emitted by the different rare gases, the undulating tube subtly manipulates the light, softening and intensifying it in turns.
M–L–XL
Marco Campardo & Lorenzo Mason
(ITA, UK)
Is an office for production and research across different disciplines, focusing on furniture, exhibitions, graphics, typography and publishing. The studio emerges from a collaborative practice founded in 2005 by Marco Campardo and Lorenzo Mason and focuses on extensive research, working through a plurality of languages, skills and knowledge. In the occasion of ‘The House electric’ the studio will show its last research on a furniture collection based on the use of an aluminium L profile. The research uses a common, everyday material to question the meaning of “innovation”, “novelty” and “experimentation” that is often emphasised in today’s design practice. The profiles are combined in different ways with joins that are invisible, thus playing with the idea of materiality/immateriality and at the same time highlighting the overall construction of each object.
Richard Wheater (UK)
He is an artist using performance and installation to discuss our relationship with the natural environment. Output often remains loyal — but not exclusive to — his fascination with glass and neon, of which he performs and exhibits worldwide. He will show several new works of an industrial, functional aesthetic. Their aim is to describe neon and electricity as an object, whilst simultaneously suggesting links to human nature. Wheater is the founder of Neon Workshops, a company specializing in teaching and fabricating/installing neon.
S. Marco 3073
30124, Venice (ITALY)
