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20 June, 2010

Contemplating the Void—Create Your Own Guggenheim Intervention.

Contemplating the Void confirms how truly catalytic the architecture of the Guggenheim can be.

Greek version

To celebrate the close of the Guggenheim's 50th Anniversary year on May 14, 2010, the museum organised the competition Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim, inviting participants to "reimagine the museum's iconic rotunda" and submit their ideas via the site Flickr. 200 proposals were submitted and the exhibitions' curators (Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, and David Van Der Leer, Assistant Curator for Architecture and Design), selected five winning submissions that are described below by the inspirers.

The Buried Void
Noel Turgeon
St. Paul, Minnesota

In The Buried Void, a stream of sand falls continuously from the oculus at the top of the Guggenheim into the museum and collects on the rotunda floor. For fifty years the sand will gradually fill the void, stopping on October 21, 2059 (the 100th anniversary of the Guggenheim) when it will have filled the space completely. Until then, guests in the building will be encouraged to experience and actively participate in this measure of time: as the physical objects in their lives become obsolete, visitors are encouraged to place them into museum-provided capsules and throw them into the sand. During the centennial celebration of the Guggenheim the rotunda will be excavated and the contents will be displayed in an evolutionary retrospective of forgotten things from the first half of the 21st century. The inspiration for this intervention comes from two sources: the first is wondering what will be forgotten by the future and how it could be remembered, the second is a desire to trace the passage of time through the physical means of space and objects.

Favelart

Lucio Carvalho
Sao Paulo, Brazil

Favelart was inspired by Brazil where, if the culture does not reach out to parts that are in poverty, then poverty will, in turn, invade the culture.

A project with strong concept that needed no further ddescription by the creator.

Sunflowers
David Andrew Tasman
New York, New York

Sunflowers proposes the installation of a field of sunflowers on the upper level of the rotunda. For the past 50 years, the Guggenheim has helped to bring art into life as well as the reverse. By bringing the outside in, the typical relationship between building and landscape is inverted, making the natural available for contemplation in a way that is normally reserved for works of art. The inspiration for this intervention came from an interest in popular culture and using contrasting juxtapositions as away to invoke the sublime.

VOID CONDITION(ED)
Bad Architects Group (Paul Burgstaller/Ursula Faix
Innsbruck, Austria

The idea behind the VOID CONDITION(ED) is the German word for the void, "Luftraum", literally translated „air-space".

By conditioning the given air, which is already present in the void, we create the possibility to access the space as is without interrupting how it currently exists, yet adding another dimension or layer to the existing experience in form of a vertical wind tunnel.

WTF?! (watch the fool)
Bruny Yan You Fu
Rennes, France

WTF?! (watch the fool) tries to give a geometrical response to "contemplating the void." The inspiration for this intervention was drawn from a story about the famous architect, Tadao Ando.

When Ando was young, the roof of his house collapsed and left a big hole. This was when Ando came to realize that "contemplating the void" is also feeling the space, feeling the beauty of something invisible.

Inspiration was also drawn from the Pantheon of Hadrien in Rome.


The web competition / exhibition organized as part of the anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum, New York and following the exhibition presented in the rotunda of the Guggenheim. Artists, designers, architects left the practice and reality in order to design the space.

Τhe Guggenheim invited scores of artists, architects and designers to leave practicality or even reality behind in conjuring their proposals for the space. In this exhibition of ideal projects, certain themes emerge, including the return to nature in its primordial state, the desire to climb the building, the interplay of light and space, the interest in diaphanous effects as a counterpoint to the concrete structure, and the impact of sound on the environment. Conceived as both a commemoration and a self-reflexive folly, Contemplating the Void confirms how truly catalytic the architecture of the Guggenheim can be.

Submissions were received from all over the world from a wide range of artists, designers, and architects, including emerging as well as established practitioners. Among the many works in the exhibition are projects by artists Alice Aycock, FAKE DESIGN (Ai Weiwei), Anish Kapoor, Sarah Morris, Wangechi Mutu, Mike Nelson, Paul Pfeiffer, Doris Salcedo, Lawrence Weiner, and Rachel Whiteread; designers such as Fernando and Humberto Campana, Martí Guixé, Joris Laarman Studio, and Studio Job; and architects such as Álvaro Siza Vieira Arquitecto, BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), Greg Lynn FORM, junya.ishigami+associates, MVRDV, N55, Philippe Rahm, Snøhetta, Studio Daniel Libeskind, Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects, and West 8.

  • Installation view: Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2010
    Photo: David Heald
    © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York

  • Installation view: Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2010
    Photo: David Heald
    © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York

  • Installation view: Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2010
    Photo: David Heald
    © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York

  • Acconci Studio (Vito Acconci), Brooklyn, New York
    SPIDERMUSE(UM)...WRIGHT-O-WEB...SPINNING GUGGY..., 2009
    Digital print, 193 x 135.9 cm
    Artwork © Acconci Studio

  • Julien De Smedt Architects (JDS), Brussels
    Experiencing the Void, 2009
    Digital print, 48.3 x 33 cm
    Artwork © Julien De Smedt Architects (JDS)

  • Anish Kapoor (b. 1954, Bombay)
    Ascension (Red), 2009
    Three digital prints, two parts 44.5 x 36.2 cm each, one part 44.5 x 56.6 cm, edition 1/ 6
    Artwork © Anish Kapoor

  • MAD Architects (Yansong Ma), Beijing
    State Fair Guggenheim, 2009
    Digital print, 94.5 x 68.6 cm
    Artwork © MAD

  • MVRDV, Rotterdam, Netherlands
    Let's Jump!, 2009
    Digital print, 95.3 x 68.6 cm
    Artwork © MVRDV

  • Saunders Architecture, Bergen, Norway
    FLW in His Element, 2009
    Digital print, 48.3 x 32.7 cm
    Artwork © Saunders Architecture

Τhe competition Flickr pool is the web exhibition of Re:Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim will remain open for others to share their own reimaginings of the Guggenheim's rotunda.

Information-images: press room Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/press-room

First level image:
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Photo: David Heald. © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. FLWW-14

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