New Anderson Gallery exhibitions explore architecture

Two new exhibitions that examine different aspects of architecture — “Photographic Recall: Italian Rationalist Architecture in Contemporary German Art” and “Cages/Logging” — will open Feb. 9 at the UB Anderson Gallery with a public reception from 6-8 p.m. at the gallery.

‘Photographic Recall: Italian Rationalist Architecture in Contemporary German Art’

How do contemporary artists use photography to engage with Italian architecture of the fascist era? What lures them today into the remains of this “rationalist” style? Where is the tipping point between a self-proclaimed, critical observation and complicity with Mussolini’s propaganda project of the 1920s-40s?

These and other questions occupy the minds of the seven artists in “Photographic Recall.” The exhibition is the first to showcase these mostly German photographers, all independently drawn to Italian rationalist architecture and urban spaces. The work by Caterina Borelli, Johanna Diehl, Günther Förg, Eiko Grimberg, Thomas Ruff, Hans-Christian Schink and Heidi Specker represents themes that vary in style from street photography and lush interiors to synthetic architectural documentation and carefully pre-planned and measured urban scenes.

Their use of media ranges from analog to digital processes, black-and-white to color imagery, and a variety of works made in series. Each artist engages these built environments with his/her own visual language, demonstrating photography’s intense involvement with aesthetic and conceptual trends in contemporary art of the past three decades.

“Photographic Recall” is curated by Miriam Paeslack, associate professor in the Department of Media Study, and is organized by the UB Art Galleries. It is on view through May 12.

The exhibition is supported by the College of Arts and Sciences – Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra Kurt Weill Collaboration Project. Funding also has been provided by the German Institute for Foreign Affairs; UB departments of Media Study, Architecture and History; the UB Human­ities Institute; and the German Consulate.

‘Cages/Logging’

This exhibition presents the work of a graduate research studio and a research seminar in the Department of Architecture.

The work in “Cages” explores the qual­ities of material boundaries and enclosing conditions that relate structure and skin, establishing critical connections between the natural and the artificial in the material experience.

Through the production of wooden structures with considerations of matter, fabrication, form and emotion, students looked at the operations of transverse physical and visual relationships that promote critical thinking in terms of active perception and spatial construction between an inside and an outside.

While there was no specific site for their project proposals, students were asked to consider a basic program based on a one-person space for inspiration and isolation. “Cages” was their attempt to embrace the connections between wood, craft, space and emotion.

“Logging” presents research that examined material origins and the ethics of material consumption as they pertain to wood construction. The work enacted the process of how a tree becomes a log and then timber for use in building or carpentry.

Most of the technological innovations in the logging industry have attempted to standardize the material; that is, to kill the plant so it will behave and perform in a predictable and consistent manner.

As a counterpoint to this historical trend, the project aimed to embrace the living, unpredictable and irregular features inherent to all trees, as well as design experiments that attempt to capitalize on these eccentric qualities. The research was an attempt to rekindle the omnipresent relationship between people and wood.

“Cages/Logging” builds two parallel narratives that explore the processes by which nature becomes a material space charged with intellectual emotion. From the exploration that compels us to search for the natural sources that will provide us with our building materials to the actual manufacturing of the skin that protects us from that same environment, “Cages/Logging” offers a unique vision of the privilege and responsibility that we have in the design of our spaces.

It is on view through March 31.

Both exhibition are free and open to the public.

The UB Anderson Gallery is located at 1 Martha Jackson Place, off Englewood Avenue near the South Campus. Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and from 1-5 p.m. on Sunday.