'CASA BARRAGAN FACE PAINTINGS' A PROJECT BY PAUL SAMMUT AND ALEXANDRA TERRY

"I thought about Barragan's house in Mexico City because it's composed of these bright flamboyant colours and grand vistas but is also about withdrawal and separation. It's so full of paranoia and hidden behind these stunning monochromes. The square was obviously based on Goeritz's gold paintings. I paired the palette down to white, gold and bright pink, like in Barragan's foyer space, to keep it simple..."
Paul Sammut

Conceived and developed by P.A.S.T. Projects (Paul Sammut and Alexandra Terry)
http://pastprojectslibrary.blogspot.com/

CERITH WYN EVANS 'TO KNOW HIM IS TO LOVE HIM' CURATED BY PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA AT CASA BARRAGAN

'The Curves of the Needle', slide projection


visitors waiting in Barragan's garden, there might be no fireworks because of the rain...


Proust's phrase, transcribed and translated by Barragan








Casa Luis Barragán y Pablo León de la Barra presentan
Cerith Wyn Evans
‘To Know him is to Love Him’
Sabado 17 de Abril , 7PM
Abierto por cita previa hasta Junio 12

‘To Know him is to Love Him’, presenta dos trabajos realizados por el artista gales Cerith Wyn Evans para la Casa Luis Barragán.

El primer trabajo, ‘Las Curvas de la Aguja’ consiste en la proyección de diapositivas The Curves of the Needle, cuyo título es tomado del texto de Theodor Adorno escrito en 1927, que examina la noción de la música como un retrato psicológico cultural de oyente. Las imágenes de fotografías hechas en la Casa Barragán y en la Ciudad de México durante su estancia en el 2002, son combinadas con fotografías del archivo personal de Wyn Evans e imágenes encontradas que dialogan con la obra de Barragán. A la vez, las imágenes son acompañadas de un fondo musical realizado a partir de una selección musical hecha por Wyn Evans de la colección de discos del propio Barragán. El titulo de la exposición, ‘To Know him is to Love Him’, proviene de una de las canciones de esta selección musical. ‘Las Curvas de la Aguja’ fue desarrollado a partir de la participación del artista en la exposición ‘El Aire es Azul’ en la Casa Luis Barragán curada por Hans Ulrich Obrist en 2002, donde el artista reparó los tocadiscos de Barragán e hizo que hubiera de nuevo música en la casa. Es la primera vez que ‘Las Curvas de la Aguja’ se exhibe en México, y en palabras del artista, exponer la obra en el contexto donde fue realizada consiste en un acto semejante al de ‘traer al herido de vuelta al campo de batalla’.

El segundo trabajo, presentado en el jardín-taller localizado en frente de Casa Barragán, consiste en la realización de una escultura temporal lumínica de texto construida con fuegos artificiales. La escultura presenta un texto de Marcel Proust que aparece en su novela publicada en 1913, En Busca del Tiempo Perdido, Por el Camino de Swann, y que Barragán subrayó en su copia del libro y que transcribió en su cuaderno de notas. La frase transcrita dice:
EL RECUERDO DE UNA IMAGEN DETERMINADA
NO ES SINO LA AÑORANZA DE UN INSTANTE DETERMINADO;
Y LAS CASAS, LOS CAMINOS, LAS AVENIDAS SON FUGITIVOS,
¡HAY! COMO LOS AÑOS…
La escultura luminosa existe por tan solo unos minutos antes de desvanecerse, de la misma manera como la memoria, las imágenes y el tiempo desaparecen. Tanto la frase de Proust, como la arquitectura de Barragán y la obra de Wyn Evans, existen en un espacio atemporal, un espacio de dolor sensible ante el mundo, de un entender del mundo contemporáneo que existe en desfase al de sus propios contemporáneos. Tanto la obra de Barragán, Proust y Wyn Evans detonan el subconsciente de la memoria para existir entre lo visible y lo invisible, lo presente y lo ausente.

Cerith Wyn Evans nació en1958 en Llanelli, Gales, vive y trabaja en Londres. El trabajo de Wyn Evans se desarrolla a partir de los setentas en el underground londinense, donde colaboró de cerca con los cineastas británicos Derek Jarman y John Maybury, siendo uno de los protagonistas del movimiento conocido como los New Romantics. Durante la década de los ochentas Wyn Evans realizó una serie de películas experimentales, a la par que colaboró con otros legendarios artistas como Michael Clark, Leigh Bowery, Throbbing Gristle, The Smiths o The Fall. Durante los últimos años, el trabajo de Wyn Evans se ha convertido en un punto de referencia imprescindible de la escena artística londinense, su sofisticada obra ha inspirado a muchos artistas de las generaciones mas recientes. La obra de Wyn Evans está concebida por su relación crítica e histórica frente a las posibilidades y vicisitudes tanto del cine, la música, la arquitectura y la escritura, creando relaciones inusuales entre el espacio, la luz, el lenguaje y los objetos, donde la opacidad, y la experiencia de la obra implican una aceptación de la imposibilidad de una coherencia inmediata.

En 2003, Wyn Evans represento a Gales en la 50 edición de la Bienal de Venecia. Ha participado en la novena edición de la Bienal de Istanbul (2005), Yokohama Triennale (2008) y en la próxima Aichi Triennale (2010). En 2009 colaboró con Florian Hecker y con Thyssen-Bornemisza Arte Contemporaneo en No night No day en la 53ava Bienal de Venecia (2009). Tambien colaboró con Throbbing Gristle en una instalación visual y auditiva titulada A=P=P=A=R=I=T=I=O=N exhibida en la Yokohama Triennale y en Tramway, Glasgow. Exposiciones individuales recientes incluyen Kunsthaus Graz (2005), Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris, Paris (2006), MUSAC, Leon (2008), Inverleith House, Edinburgh (2009) y Tramway, Glasgow (2009).

Agradecimientos:
Casa Luis Barragán, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jose García Torres, Mario García Torres, MARCO Monterrey, Carla Verea, Francisca Rivero Lake, Cecilia León de la Barra, Marta Gerveno.

Fuegos Artificiales: Arquitecto Enrique Rico Campos

Cerith Wyn Evans, ‘To Know him is to Love Him’, es possible gracias al apoyo economico de la Fundación/Colección Jumex y Eugenio López Alonso a travez de su programa de patrocinios.

Casa Luis Barragán, General Francisco Ramírez 14, Colonia Ampliación Daniel Garza, México, D.F.
Visitas previa cita: Lunes a Viernes 10AM a 2PM y 4 PM a 6 PM, Sábados 10 AM a 1 PM
Tel: (52) 55 5515-4908
casaluisbarragan@gmail.com
http://www.casaluisbarragan.org/

PIERRE LEGUILLON'S 'PLACEMENT' LECTERN AT REPLACING EXHIBITIONS, A REPLICA OF BARRAGAN'S LECTERN

Pierre Leguillon's lectern at 'Retracing Exhibitions'


Barragan's lectern at his house!


measurement drawings of Barragan's lectern by PLB done in 1995 used to build Leguillon's lectern!



Pierre Leguillon's 'Placement'

Leguillon has photographed many exhibitions since 1993 which he integrates amongst other images into slideshows he regularly screens in public, their content being augmented and renewed for each session. Placement (2009) is a composition of installation images, engravings, film stills, postcards and magazine pages arranged on a replica of architect Luis Barragan's wooden lectern from his house in Mexico City.

Pierre Leguillon was born in 1969. He has developed projects as a curator and critic since the beginning of the 1990s, by creating a single page review, "Sommaire" (35 issues between 1991 and 1996), then by collaborating on "Journal des Arts", and "Art press" (Special issue "Oublier l'exposition" in 2000), then on "Purple" (column "Calme plat" about printed objects from 2002 to 2004). His slideshows have been shown at Centre d'Art et du Paysage de Vassiviere in Limousin, Maison Rouge and Menagerie de Verre in Paris; LIFE in Saint-Nazaire; Secession in Vienna and Temple Gallery in Philadelphia among others. In October 2008, he opened in Bordeaux, at the Capc, a franchise of "La promesse de l'écran" ("The promise of the screen"), a screening space initiated in Paris in 2007. He will have a solo exhibition at the gallery Song Song in Vienna from December 2008 to January 2009. He recently curated the exhibition Diane Arbus: A Printed Retrospective, 1960-1971 in Paris at Kadist Art Foundation (2009).

'EL AIRE ES AZUL/THE AIR IS BLUE' AT LUIS BARRAGAN'S HOUSE, CURATED BY HANS ULRICH OBRIST

Claudia Fernandez,´El espacio ideal´, 2002
Impromptu appearance of horses and lambs on November 2nd


Rirkrit Tiravanija, 'Restoration of Barragán's Cadillac', 2002-2003


Damian Ortega,'Torre', 2002, Latex and concrete, (45 x 30 x 253 cm)


Gilbert & George, Photograph of the artist on their visit to Barragán's House, 2002


Dan Graham, 'Two-way Mirror Hedge Labyrinth- Water Basin Version', 1989-2002, Model


Olafur Eliasson, 'The Barragán House Kaleidoscope', 2002, kaleidoscope, mixed media, (120 x 120 x 70 cm)


Mirrored Ball, House Interior


Gilbert & George, Photograph of the artist on their visit to Barragán's House, 2002


Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Exoplanet, 2002, Mirrored glass balls and balloons


Pablo Leon de la Barra and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster



Breakfast Room, interior; Barragans' plates with the inscription 'Solitude'


Pablo Leon de la Barra, "Soledad", 2003, Graffiti on a street wall
read my text in the catalogue here.


El Aire es Azul - The Air is Blue
Hans Ulrich Obrist

When I visited Mexico City for the first time, Pedro Reyes told me a lot about the Casa Barragán, which inspired a first visit in the house of the same name. After a while, the idea of an imaginary exhibition began to take shape and in the course of the following year it crystallized in conversations with the Director of the Barragán house, Catalina Corcuera and LCM, a visionary urban laboratory who had already organized several very intense research projects in Mexico City. LCMs openness and inventiveness allowed us to define this exhibition as a Laboratory where the emphasis lies on the process of research and knowledge production.

Throughout the year 2002 the artists visited the Museum and made their research in situ. The Laboratory year at the Barragan House is about how experiments, ideas and concepts work between art and architecture, how bridges can be built where we go beyond the fear of pooling knowledge.

The two parts of the exhibition, which open in November 2002 and January 2003, aim at rendering public what happened during the one year of research. The wonderful and enthusiastic organization of this exhibition through LCM and the Barragán House has been a stimulating and rewarding experience, enriched by the vision of the artists themselves. I would like to thank all the artists and Fernando, Tatiana, Rita, Jose at LCM wholeheartedly for making all this possible.

There are many posthumous museums and memorials devoted exclusively to one artist or architect, or designed to preserve the namesake's original working conditions, or living conditions. Much rarer are the museums conceived by artists in their lifetimes as an environment and preserved as such, which - similar to the Sir John Soanes Museum in London - clearly is the case with the very consciously constructed house of Barragán.

The project which started to evolve in the Barragán House is the continuation of the exhibition which Cerith Wyn Evans and I had organized in 1999 /2000 at the Sir John Soanes Museum in London, which focused on the interstices of what happens between the "various narratives, various objects, and these extraordinary vistas that you come upon by accident, and then you catch a reflection of yourself." (1)

Since the Museum has the dimensions of a home, visitors do not have the same relationship to the works on display as they would in monumental museum architecture. The gulf between the museum and the world of living experience, criticized by Adorno, has been bridged.

An obsession with color and light are a read-thread of Barragáns universe, Barragán achieved his effects, not through ornamentation or ornamental reduction, but through space, color, and light. The Museum reveals various superimposed and merging states of color- light, constructed by Barragán. Visitors encounter direct, indirect, reflected, broken, dispersed, or refracted light, BARRAGAN: SPACE - COLOR - LIGHT: INVENTION (2). Color / light also plays an important role for artists in their dealings with the Museum.

The garden and pavilion form an inseparable unit of rare beauty, the artistic interventions will take place both inside and outside the house. Both garden and house are accessible and open to visitors who are invited to discover Barragán's private library, archives (personal documents and photographs), art collections; ongoing conservation of Barragán's work; and publications. The exhibition "The Air Is Blue" (title conceived by artist Douglas Gordon), invites the viewer to see contemporary artists' interventions, dealing with the water-fountain / garden, the colored walls, the sky, the sound of the building, the silence, the kitchen, the garage, the stairways / labyrinth, clothes and textiles, flowing space, seamless space, stage architecture - "monumental in quality, static in feeling" - as Emilio Ambasz defined it. The user introduces the tension / presence-absence issue, memory: "Art is memorys mise- en- scéne".

As Emilia Terragni shows in her text "Art within Architecture", Barragán's lifelong search for the integration of the arts and architecture led him to intense dialogues with visual artists and their work: Jose Clemente Orozco, Dr. Atl, Chucho Reyes, Mathias Goeritz, de Chirico, Josef and Anni Albers, and many others.

In "Origins of Modernism: Luis Barragán, the Formative Years" Marco de Michelis reveals the importance of several journeys for Barragán's life and work: in 1924/25 his first European Grand Tour and his longer stay in Paris in 1925 (the confrontation with the works of Le Corbusier, Mallet Stevens, Melnikov or Kiesler in the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes and the discovery of the garden of the exhibition and the related writings of Ferdinand Bac). This trip was followed by important trips to New York in 1931 where Barragán met Orozco and Kiesler. The meeting with Kiesler is particularly interesting for the bridges between art and architecture, between art and life.

footnotes:
1. Cerith Wyn Evans
2. Lygia Pape


Text on Barragan by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster:

Walking mentally through the house
A golden square floating above the stairs
Remembering the gray telephone ringing
Ringing several times no answer ringing again
Pink interior walls and green garden darkness
The futuristic reflection of each room into a mirror ball
A spheric and permanent sense of photography
A mirror ball like a mental swimming pool in a room
Diving into reflected space

Built spaces photographed spaces fluid spaces
Photo-spaces spatial image - mirrored space
Intense iconographic metabolism and deep emotional
traffic
Barragan and photography and images - and space

The terrace of the house is the spatialization of an image
A photographic iconographic relation to architecture
its a space-image a reproduced space
A recorded space
A transferred picture
An empty terrace or an empty picture
During the first visit to the house
a clear impossibility to take any pictures
of a space totally connected to pictorial emotions

A visit to El Pedregal Some places dont exist anymore
some parts of El Pedregal only exist through photography
now -
photographic feelings emotional spaces
images in Barragans house paintings, windows,
screens, color walls, mirror balls

terrace-image
surface-image
space-image


List of Works:
DOUGLAS GORDON
'El aire es azul / the air is blue', 2002
Exhibition Title

RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA
'Restoration of Barragán's Cadillac', 2002-2003

GILBERT & GEORGE
Photograph of the artist on their visit to Barragán's House, 2002.

CLAUDIA FERNANDEZ
´El espacio ideal´, 2002
Impromptu appearance of horses and lambs on November the 2nd.

IÑAKI BONILLAS
´Untitled / sin título, 2002
Photograph

PEDRO REYES
'Salmos', 2002
Artist book, (25 x 19 cm) 120 p.Edition of 1000

CERITH WYN EVANS
'Jukebox Barragán´, 2002
A selection of records owned by Luis Barragán will be reproduced on the
house's original audio players.

PETER FISCHILI & DAVID WIESS
'12 Siedlungen, Aglomeration', 1992
16 color prints (21 x 29 cm)

LYGIA PAPE
'Tteia', 2002
Golden cotton thread installation.

RONI HORN
'Saying water' 2001
Sound installation.

KAZUO SEJIMA / RYUE NISHIZAWA - SANAA
´Mirror chairs´, 2002
Garden chairs.

DAN GRAHAM
'Two-way Mirror Hedge Labyrinth- Water Basin Version'
1989-2002
Model.

OLAFUR ELIASSON
'The Barragán House Kaleidoscope', 2002
kaleidoscope, mixed media
(120 x 120 x 70 cm)

KOO JEONG-A
'Barragán's Urinary', 2002
Stainless steel

ANRI SALA
'No Barragán, No cry', 2002
Photography

DOMINIQUE GONZALES FORESTER
Exoplanet, 2002
Mirrored glass balls and balloons.

DAMIAN ORTEGA
'Torre', 2002
Latex and concrete
(45 x 30 x 253 cm)

FRANCIS ALYS
Suite Barragan, 2003.
Stolen towels and amenities from the Camino Real Hotel suites,
smuggled into Luis Barragan's former bedroom.
In collaboration with Cuahutemoc Medina

PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA
"Soledad", 2003.
Graffiti on a street wall

CARLA FERNANDEZ
Bedding, 2003.
Handmade wool cover for Luis Barragan's bed
that becomes a dress to be used in the house.

YONA FIEDMAN
Drawings of la ville spatiale 1959-1960

LIAM GILLICK.
Untitled, 2003.
80 pages document of an internet search

ARMIN LINKE,
Bagdad panorama, 2002
Photograph

DORIT MARGREITER
Beads courtain / two or three things he knows about me, 2003.
Artist's book

PHILIPPE PARRENO / RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA
Poster 120 x 90 cms.

HANI RASHID
Data transfer to mexico city, 2003.
dvd loop, flatscreen.

PEDRO REYES
'Prana', 2003.
Animation loop 2 min. LCD.
in collaboration with Jose Castro

MARKUS SCHINWALD
Diarios, 2003.
Slide projection and soundtrack.

'FORGET BARRAGAN' A TEXT BY PABLO LEON DE LA BARRA FOR THE CATALOGUE OF 'EL AIRE ES AZUL' A EXHIBITION CURATED BY HUO AT CASA BARRAGAN

Pablo Leon de la Barra, "Soledad", 2003, Graffiti on a street wall


FORGET BARRAGAN.
by Pablo León de la Barra

I first visited Barragan's house sometime in the autumn of 1994, just after the legal fight for his inheritance had finished, but before the house was opened to the public. It was late in the afternoon, before sunset and there was not much light. The house was gray, the plaster on the walls was falling and everything smelled like old dust, the smell of being locked for a long time time, the smell of dead. It was like entering into the past, to a place where time had stopped. The coloured walls looked flat, not at all like the coloured photographs of Armando Salas Portugal. I must confess I was not very impressed by the house.

I was 22 at the time, finishing my studies of architecture and starting to develop an obsession with Barragan's architecture. During the past summer Fernando Romero and myself had been working at the Atelier of Andres Casillas, maybe the only true disciple of Barragan who had collaborated with him in the design of the Egerstrom House. In December 1993, we had visited some works of Casillas, especially one, an old club house in Valle de Bravo which I had visited frequently as a child and which constantly appeared in my dreams. We contacted Casillas, who invited us for a drink in his house, and who later invited us to collaborate with him. Working with Casillas, we learned the secrets of a discipline that were transmitted to us in an almost secret way. Around the time we also visited many of the works of Barragan, most of which were then closed to the public: Gilardi, Prieto, Egerstom, Galvez, Meyer, Capuchinas, El Pedregal, Arboledas, Satelite, etc. Together with another friend, Omar Fernandez, Fernando celebrated one of his birthdays doing a party inside one of the Torres de Satelite which were normally locked. On another occasion I also invited a group of friends to a small installation I did inside the yellow tower, where slideshow images were projected towards a mirror and then towards the walls of the tower; in order to produce electricity for the projector to work, I had borrowed a gasoline power plant from a friend! Some mornings I would wake up really early, drive towards Las Torres, and walk around them and inside them waiting for the sun to rise, the framing of the sky by the interior of the towers would produce similar effects as those experienced in a James Turell installation. Our interest also expanded into studying and visiting the works of Mathias Goeritz, especially El Eco, and Chucho Reyes' house. Through my friend Alvaro Moragrega in Guadalajara I also visited most of Barragan's early work in Guadalagara and his library which had been relocated there. In Guadalajara I got in contact with an inherited and continued tradition of architecture which favoured poetics, serenity and space over architectonic fashion and high tech.

At that time there wasn't much interest in Barragan's work in Mexico, his architecture was considered by some as out of fashion, for others, it had been linked to discourses on national identity. His work was much more respected outside of the country. As most of his work was inaccessible, people had access to his work through the images that appeared in books, which were copied by architects and which had created the so-called "Barragan Style". Much of this copying had to do with integrating colour to the building, and not with understanding the spatial complexity of his work. For Fernando and myself, as well as for other of our friends and contemporaries (Pedro Reyes and Jorge Covarrubias among others), the work of Barragan offered an alternative to the architecture education we had received up to the moment, a school based in importing and adapting models seen in foreign architecture books magazines in order to incorporate the country to super-modern globalisation. I must also say that we were not interested in following Barragan's footsteps, but much more in learning from his work, understanding his process, and how he had created such a unique architecture.

In the summer of 1995 I did my social service at Barragan's House (students in Mexico, when they finish their bachelor studies, are required to donate six months of voluntary service to a non profit institution), assisting the newly appointed first director of the House-Museum, Norma Soto. Through a series of donations the house was being refurbished and recovered its old spirit. There, I trained young architecture students in giving guided tours to visitors to the house. Most of the visitors were mostly foreigners or other young architecture students. It's funny how still today the guides repeat many of the stories I used to tell about the house and how these stories are still transmitted, repeated and transformed by the new volunteers. But mostly what I did, was spend time in the house. I arrived early in the morning and left late at night. I measured it all, trying to understand Barragan's spatial proportions. I experienced it under the most diverse and fascinating light conditions. I made phenomenological experiments trying to understand the different perceptual conditions that happened in the house. I followed shadows and reflections. I walked around without shoes. I walked with my eyes closed smelling or touching the different materials. I had lunch in the kitchen with Paulita and Ana Maria, his old cook and housekeeper. I would spend time in the garden under the sunlight with his old gardener. I would visit his workshop and garden across the street, and was one of the first to have access to his previous house and gardens next door. I got drunk with tequila in the dinning room. I turned lights on and off. I opened and closed doors. I slept in the different rooms. I opened his wardrobe. I ate the red flowers from the Colorin tree in the garden that he loved to have cooked for lunch. I swam on the fountain, walked naked on the roof terrace and kissed lovers there while seeing airplanes pass overhead.

It was at that time that I started doing art installations, many of which were informed by the knowledge I had acquired at Barragan's house. I felt a strong connection with Luis Barragan, a man whom I had never met (he died on November 22, 1988) but who was having such a strong influence on my life. I was even making connections between his birth date (March 9, 1902) and my birthday (March 19, 1972).

After his house was opened to the public new interest developed in Barragan's work. During March and April 1996 two major exhibitions were presented at el Palacio de San Ildefonso in Mexico City which revealed new understandings of his work: "Obra Completa" (which organized chronologically most of his work, from his early Guadalajara period to his early modern buildings in Mexico City to the final consolidation of his architectonic language), and "Sitio + Superficie" curated by Carlos Ashida and which made analogies and cross lectures between his work and the work of minimalist artists working in the 70's: Andre, Judd, Flavin, Serra, Irwing but also with artists such as Albers, Long and Gonzalez Torres. A series of publications with more images of his work followed. Those years, I used to meet weekly at a cantina with Victor Alcerreca and Alejandro Hernandez among other friends in a kind of secret society with our self appointed teacher Humberto Ricalde to discuss the need of writing a document which liberated Barragan from the two dimensional myth and which with a critical and generational distance could re-read his professional and personal complexity. In a similar way the acquisition of the Barragan archives by the Vitra Foundation in Switzerland, together with the later exhibition and publication by Federica Zanco and Emilia Terragni "The Quiet Revolution" contributed extensively towards liberating Barragan from a single, one dimensional reading to a much more complex understanding of the man and his work.

In September 1997 I left Mexico to go to study to London. The day before flying, I went very early in the morning with Jeronimo Hagerman for the last time to Barragan's house. The shadows in the roof were extremely long, within some minutes as the sun rose, the shadows started moving quickly until almost disappearing. The space filled with light. There were no clouds on sight, just one or two airplanes passing above, signs of a departure. We took some polaroids of ourselves in the house and hid them under one of Barragan's heavy cabinets. Maybe they are still there.

Since then I have been practicing an exercise called "Forget Barragan". When I'm in Mexico City, I try not to visit his works or his house. I have noticed how most of my friends who have worked around or about his work have developed this crazy obsession on him, sometimes they think they are him, or act as the widow he never had. I constantly try to forget Barragan, still he constantly reappears, existing inside my subconscious and appearing inside my dreams.

A previous version of this text appears in the catalogue of the exhibition 'El Aire es Azul', curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist at Casa Barragan.