We may in the midst of redefining “midcentury modernism.” A new exhibition at The Palm Springs Art Museum’s Architecture and Design Center is introducing us to a new concept: meta-modern.
MetaModern is a traveling exhibition currently on display through Feb. 27, 2017, at the museum.
Originally curated by Judith Hoos Fox and Ginger Gregg Duggan of CuratorSquared and first presented at the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois-Champaign, the exhibition features 24 works composed of sculpture, photography, video, works on paper, and paintings. The exhibition features 18 international artists “who incorporate elements of iconic modern design, sometimes literally and often conceptually, into their own work. The result is an entirely unique mix: a meta-modernism…” according to the exhibition description.
Brooke Hodge, the newly installed director of architecture and design at the Palm Springs Art Museum’s Architecture and Design Center, says this idea of “meta” refers to a metaphorical and metaphysical look by artists who use modernism as a prism to view their own work. In this way, they use modernism as a starting point to create their own interpretation.
Additionally, Hodge says the exhibition “focuses on the premise of artists who look at modern design and architecture as an inspiration or platform and encourages them to examine their own work, challenging them to understand why they are interested in modernism and what spoke to them about it. It provides a bridge to the viewer with images they’ll have a familiarity with such as the Eames chair.”
Hodge expanded the idea during a well-attended lecture at Modernism Week Fall Preview Weekend — A Meta-modern Mashup: Reconsidering Modernist Design.
PHOTO BY MIGUEL ANGELO GUERREIRO
Fernanda Fragateiro, MR10 Double Chair after Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich, 2009, Polished stainless steel, Güttermann silk thread.
“Brooke made some interesting links between art, architecture and design and the increasing synergy between them,” says Sidney Williams, the museum’s former curator of architecture and design who attended the lecture. “That link, I think, is a subject that really interests her and is indicative of current thinking.”
One of the exhibition pieces called Narcissus by Edgar Orlaineta is work that incorporates two of the famous LCW chairs by Charles and Ray Eames. Orlaineta attached the chairs to each other, feet to feet, creating a mirror image that is suspended from the ceiling like a cross between mobile and a sculpture.
Conrad Baker’s piece further illustrates how the artists have taken inspiration from the same iconic object and created their own interpretation.
Another example is a work by Los Angeles artist, James Welling, who used Philip Johnson’s iconic Glass House as his inspiration, taking photos of the house with different colored filters to explore ideas of transparency, reflectivity, and color in modern architecture.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST, © CONRAD BAKKER
Conrad Bakker, Untitled Project: Eames Armchair Rocker (+ Walden), 2012, oil on carved maple wood.
Although this was an exhibition that had been already planned prior to Hodge joining the A+D Center over the summer, she has put her own spin on “MetaModern,” which was coined by the exhibition curators and may make its way into our own zeitgeist. “I’m also interested in the idea of the mash up or remix that has been in the air for a while and that always leads to something new, including the way we look at things we may already be familiar with,” she says.
MetaModern, through Feb. 27, 2017, Architecture and Design Center, Edwards Harris Pavilion, 300 S. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, 760-423-5260; www.psmuseum.org/architecture-design-center