WritingsWritings:2012-01-28T21:32:43ZCopyright (c) 2012ExpressionEnginetag:doonarch.com,2012:01:28Like us on Facebooktag:doonarch.com,2012:index.php/site/index/4.542012-01-28T21:31:01Z2012-01-28T21:32:43ZLink to our Facebook page {extended}
]]>Yoonhee Choi, Madcap Graphstag:doonarch.com,2011:index.php/site/index/4.522011-12-04T16:51:00Z2011-12-04T17:03:55Z
Above: Teatime, 2011, mixed media, 5" x 5"
It's interesting to consider how industrial processes have affected graphic art and how many of the techniques used (with their attendant aesthetics) have disappeared over the years. There's the obsolete printing methods: movable type printing presses, photo engraving, PMT's, blueprints, diazos, faxes, photocopies, dittos, mimeographs, carbon paper, etcetera. Then there's the detritus of computer pre-history: perforated daisy-wheel printer paper, Scantron exam sheets, punch cards, etcetera, carrying nostalgic affect for those of us to whom these things used to be so common. A lot of these techniques, when used in art, accordingly seem dated to our contemporary eye. In the case of artist Yoonhee Choi, she has gone back to use another one of these forgotten systems originally marketed to illustrators to forge completely new work without the noxious whiff of the old. It's because she's taken the material and subverted its use to the extent that it sings anew.
With titles such as "Bramble," "Dawdle," "Grumble," "Even," "Cicle," and "Jaboo," the works shown in Choi's most recent exhibition bespeak a certain innocence, akin to tales from illustrated children's books that have been both pixilated and purified down to a symbology straight out of Flatland. Entitled "Madcap Graphs," the show, encompassing 20 recent works by the artist displays a casual, consensual relationship with hard-edged, gridded, monumental abstraction from a century ago of the De Stijl and Suprematist variety, presented as tiny whimsical 'cartoons' often just one inch square. Encased in a hand-drawn light graphite matrix that is not ruled with a straightedge (what the artist calls an "unpredictable armature"), the work is composed from small pieces of illustrators' and graphic artists' adhesive films and tapes (formerly known by the brand names Zip-a-tone, Chartpak, and Letratone) which have been made obsolete over the past twenty years with the introduction of the computer to illustration and graphic design. Half-circles, dots, dashes, tonal fields, solid color, dashed lines: a personal lexicon unique to each work of tiny deliberate shapes has been manufactured and deployed in these compositions. The machine-made films, which themselves lend a certain technical rigor to the work, also manage to convey a childlike, innocent sensibility in their "sticker"-like quality (often with primary colors), excised with an X-Acto blade from the original sheet of film and stuck in place in a composed array over the light grid. Don't take the remarks on childhood here to mean that the work is light or easily digestible. This is the mature work of an artist who chooses to work on a canvas that is portable and hand-held.
Occasionally, Choi's mysterious semaphore language of dots and lines seems imbued with narrative content, which may be partially due to the way the work is constructed. A leads to B (with a dotted line, often) which leads to C, and in certain cases, these relationships begin to resemble molecular chemical diagrams in their geometry. Compositions often use the resonance of similar elements to produce sensation. Mathematical-like symbols show equivalence, addition, subtraction of elements in the pieces. In other cases, a dense, treelike armature teased out of Sumi ink in lieu of the graphite grid is used to create compositions that start to resemble a trunk road with many branches, some with cul-de-sacs and interesting symbologic "dead ends." The Chartpak bits in these instances are brought to new prominence in spite of their lack of profusion because of their contract with and adjacency to the liquid medium of the ink, producing frissons from the disjunction. The artist's architectural training, while being perhaps facile reference here, bespeaks an organized mind and one trained at different scales of organization, be they buildings, towns, or almost microscopic fields of textured handmade paper.
In summation, the work does a tremendous amount with the most modest of materials, bringing you into their effervescent often light-hearted world, a new visual language built out of discarded scraps from our pre-computer heritage.
Yoonhee Choi, Blackfish Gallery
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]]>Eyebrow House in Portland Monthly Magazinetag:doonarch.com,2011:index.php/site/index/4.512011-10-21T14:43:00Z2011-11-23T16:08:33Zhere
Amara Holstein, writer webiste. {extended}
]]>Eyebrow House in ReadyMade Magazinetag:doonarch.com,2011:index.php/site/index/4.492011-05-31T23:16:00Z2011-06-09T20:51:35Zhere, purchase it at newsstands while it's out. We are honored to be chosen for its pages, and are thrilled at the quality of the story by Amara Holstein and images by Lincoln Barbour.
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]]>Eyebrow House on Hyperallergictag:doonarch.com,2011:index.php/site/index/4.502011-05-25T20:40:01Z2011-06-09T20:50:37Zinterview by Hrag Vartanian of Edgar Papazian on the Hyperallergic arts website about the Eyebrow House.
Hyperallergic is a popular website for art criticism that bills itself as "Sensitive to Art and its Discontents." {extended}
]]>Wikipedia Worktag:doonarch.com,2011:index.php/site/index/4.482011-04-22T17:58:00Z2011-04-22T18:01:34ZArticle on Aalto's Riola Parish Church
Images of reconstruction of an Armenian Cathedral called Zvartnots. Last three images, as of editing in April 2011.
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]]>Alvar Aalto Lecturetag:doonarch.com,2011:index.php/site/index/4.472011-04-13T20:12:00Z2011-04-13T21:26:06ZCaffe Umbria in Portland, sponsored by the PBSCA. It's fascinating that the two sister cities possess the only mature Aalto works in their respective countries, both comissioned by the Catholic church in virtually the same year. I got some great questions at the end, one of which piqued my interest particularly: what is it about the Mount Angel Library in its architecture relates to its setting in a religious complex? I hadn't thought about that, becuase it's a great work of architecture, but I wonder how the library would have turned out had Aalto been more able to be on site/on call during construction.
In looking at the buildings we see the rational and organic bound together, and light is celebrated as a precious commodity (we all know that in Oregon, every lumen is precious, whereas in Italy it's bountiful). There's no doubt that choice of Aalto was an inspired one in both cases. And that we still have a lot to learn from the Oregon project locally. Aalto has influenced our local culture and architectural culture, and certain aspects of his work, especially the use of wood slats as a finish material have finally become overused. These Aalto tropes have launched a hundred good to mediocre projects in Portland (although most without any of his formal dexterity and curvilinearity). I think Aalto has proven you don't have to be from here to design well here, which prompts a return to concept of critical regionalism articulated by Kenneth Frampton where site geography, climate, sustainability dictate how to build in a place - a kind of locavore architecture as we aspire to in food culture. Portland and Bologna have always straddled the line between national/regional, trendy/provincial, contextual/extraordinary, and what these projects do is integrate these opposites rather successfully in their designs. Also, because of their design and upkeep, both are perpetually new-feeling, not dated, even though they are forty years old, which is simply amazing.
I might mention in passing that we do expect more in our time from our building exteriors in terms of contextual sensitivity. Not necessarily to other preexisting buildings that surround the project, although that's part of it. But some response to the natural landscape, local conditions might be appreciated and heighten the experience. The era of high heroic modernism is most certainly over, and we're on to more formal nuance. {extended}
]]>Pecha Kucha Presentation Videotag:doonarch.com,2010:index.php/site/index/4.452010-10-15T21:38:00Z2010-10-15T21:40:24Z
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]]>Press Release July 16, 2010tag:doonarch.com,2010:index.php/site/index/4.422010-07-23T17:35:00Z2010-07-23T17:46:32Z
ARCHITECT'S BOOK ACQUIRED BY YALE UNIVERSITY
A book of designs and essays created for the Armenian Genocide Museum and Memorial (AGMM) has been purchased by the Robert B. Haas Family Special Collections Library for its Art of the Book Collection at Yale University. The author of the book is architect Edgar B. Papazian.
The book, entitled 'Scaleless: Approaching the Armenian Genocide' was first released in 2005 to the trustees of the AGMM. The 2010 edition has been appended with all of the design work the architect created from the years 2002-2005 for this project, in two distinct yet related versions, as well as other scholarly material and appendices. The book was recently shown in an art gallery exhibition in Portland, Oregon entitled "Book Power" displaying artists' books that address social and political issues.
The book contains an exploration of themes (written and visual) involved in the creation of a design for a museum two blocks from the White House in Washington D.C. dedicated to exposing the Armenian Genocide of 1915-22, a historical event whose factuality is currently denied by the descendants of the perpetrators. It contains the plans to a logically derived, diagram-based spiraling building extension to an extant bank building whose architectural design was meant to capture the attention of passerby and impart the endless suffering of the victims and their descendants via its form and material.
In 2003, Papazian, a New York native, entered into a dialogue about the design of the AGMM with businessperson-philanthropist Gerard Cafesjian, based on Cafesjian's favorable reception of Papazian's response to the Request for Qualifications (RFQ) search for the museum architect. Papazian then worked to develop his proposal in 2004 and 2005 under Cafesjian's auspices for the museum board. Due to structural changes on the board beyond the architect's control and knowledge, Papazian's designs were ostensibly abandoned sometime in 2005 or 2006.
The complete 'Scaleless' book (minus art cover and padlock) has also been made available for purchase through lulu.com, a publish-on-demand website. The striking design within it pages is a contemporary response to the cyclical nature of genocide, a process that prevents the transfer the events it contains into historical facts due to denial. Genocide is forgotten (the victims cannot speak of their experiences), and thus comes the next spiral segment and the begetting of another genocide, onward and onward, an algorithm of death. The central memorial void, or husk, would have provided a radically "decentering" spatial experience with its 1.5 million khatchkars, or cross-stones. The design was viewed as an opportunity for an edifice to guide the general public via emotional response to the form and space of the museum, and to speak about genocide as a larger societal ill, beyond the Armenian experience.
Mr. Papazian is a graduate of Columbia and Yale Universities and is an American Institute of Architects (AIA) member. He is licensed in architecture in several states. In previous employment he has worked on several cultural institutions of note, including the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, New York.
The acquisition of the book did not hinge on Papazian's status as a Yale alumnus, but was a coincidence. Jae Jennifer Rossman, Assistant Director for Special Collections at the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library of Yale University, said in response to Papazian's request for comment, "I did not know that you had a Yale connection - that is a wonderful surprise. Your book will have a home in the very building where you studied [Paul Rudolph Hall, formerly the Art and Architecture building]. I chose your work because it falls into two themes which I strive to collect in artists' books: architecture and political commentary by artists. I also wanted to include it in our collection because it deals with a political topic that is not well known -if at all- by many people, especially in the United States."
Mr. Papazian comments: "My education, training, and background made me incredibly excited to work on this project back in 2002-05, and I gave my all to it. I tried my best as a professionally accredited architect to research, execute, and edit per criticism the design as elaborated in this book. The result was -in my opinion- striking, ambitious, and powerful, and while highly pre-schematic (ie. preliminary), was eminently buildable. I feel as though there is still much more I could develop with this project to make it even better and even more appropriate to its site."
"I do not maintain contact with any of the people currently or formerly involved with the project, nor do I make any claim upon or comment about the current plans and the state of the project today. I wish them all the best. However, I do find it encouraging that an institution such as Yale finds the work and the thought behind the 2005 design have the merit to place in their permanent collection."
From the Haas Family library webpage: "Arts Library Special Collections contain a growing number of artists' books. These works take conventions and expectations associated with the book format and exaggerate, subvert, question, or ignore the ways in which the traditional codex looks, acts, and feels. In the words of art historian and book artist Johanna Drucker, they 'interrogate the form.' Artists' books in ALSC cover a broad spectrum of book works, from highly sculptural pop-ups to more traditionally printed texts, and include unique books, multiples and small editions, and occasional trade books which in some way or another play with the notion of what makes a book a book. A blend of historical collections and contemporary book arts offers a forum to examine the book as a construction, both physical and cultural."
Edgar Papazian's architectural firm is named Doon, after the Armenian word for house and home, although his work is contemporary in thought and contains many cultural sources. He provides services for architectural projects of any scale, location, and type, and strives to achieve creative personalized solutions for a diverse clientele. It is a young, emerging practice and has just completed the "Eyebrow House" in Portland, Oregon, among other projects.
Doon Architecture page on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Portland-OR/Doon-Architecture/122158827818592?__a=5
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]]>“Scaleless” available for purchasetag:doonarch.com,2010:index.php/site/index/4.402010-07-15T20:51:00Z2010-08-28T19:32:48Z
-Displayed as part of Book Power! Exhibition, 23 Sandy Gallery, Portland, Oregon, June 3-23 2010.
-Acquired in 2010 by Robert B. Haas Family Special Collections Library for its Art of the Book Collection at Yale University.
-Available for sale at Lulu.com
Yale Constructs, Spring 2009. Armenian Genocide Museum and Memorial design {extended}
]]>Eyebrow House - Steelmastertag:doonarch.com,2010:index.php/site/index/4.382010-06-16T22:03:00Z2010-06-16T22:05:07Z
The Link is Hither {extended}
]]>Scaleless, Omnibus Editiontag:doonarch.com,2010:index.php/site/index/4.362010-05-25T20:20:00Z2010-06-05T15:32:57Z
_New edition available for viewing at 23 Sandy Gallery, Portland, Oregon, June 3-26, 2010.
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]]>Eyebrow House on the Portland Architecture Blogtag:doonarch.com,2010:index.php/site/index/4.352010-05-25T20:05:00Z2010-05-25T20:57:50Z
Here is the Link to the Blog {extended}
]]>Foda Studio-Doon Architecturetag:doonarch.com,2010:index.php/site/index/4.332010-02-20T01:42:00Z2010-02-20T01:45:09Z
Link here {extended}
]]>Long-suffering wifetag:doonarch.com,2010:index.php/site/index/4.322010-01-22T00:03:00Z2010-01-22T00:09:17Z {extended}
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