Wander, Labyrinthine Variations by CENTRE POMPIDOU METZ

PRESS PACK - WANDER, LABYRINTHINE VARIATIONS

2. THE EXHIBITION I - The labyrinth AS architecture The labyrinth originates in architecture. Greek mythology popularised the concept with the Minotaur, a creature that is half-man, half-bull, imprisoned in a construction so complex that no one can find their way out. Invented by Daedalus, the original labyrinth was thus based on paradox: how can a rational, methodical structure produce confusion, disorientation and wandering? Modern-day architects and artists have considered these questions anew, and imagined principles based on broken lines, twists and turns, tangles and bulges. This part of the exhibition looks at practices which are both programmatic and decorative, and which break with the readability of straight lines. Yona Friedman Étude pour la ville spatiale,1958-1959 Project Photocopy and felt tip pen on paper 29.7 x 42 cm Centre Pompidou, Paris Collection Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de création industrielle Gift from the architect, 1992 © Adagp, Paris 2011 / Collection Centre Pompidou, Dist. RMN / Philippe Migeat

Kazimir Malevich (according to) Suprematist Ornaments, 1927-2002 Reconstructed by Poul Pedersen 7 original parts and 11 reconstructed parts mounted on a plate Plaster 27.5 x 45 x 60 cm Centre Pompidou, Paris Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de création industrielle

Kasimir Malevitch

Painter of Black Cross and Suprematist Composition: White on White, two major works of the avant-garde abstract movement, Kazimir Malevich turned to geometry and volume in the 1920s, during Suprematism's "white phase." In 1926-1927, in Leningrad, Malevich produced a series of models which he called Architektons. They include Bêta and Suprematist Ornaments. The way the various plaster shapes align arose from the artist's study of the effects of moving a square to different positions to produce rhomboid shapes of various lengths. The cube, considered the "point zero" of architecture, becomes the minimum unit, the perfect volume, divest of all concrete purpose, multiplying and proliferating in space. Henceforth, Malevich's three-dimensional work was permeated with the fundamental question of how to include the body in a white and immaterial abstraction of architecture. These two symbols of Malevich's three-dimensional work were reconstructed by Danish artist Poul Pedersen in 1978.

II - Space / Time

Yona Friedman Architect Yona Friedman was born in Budapest and has lived in Paris since the late 1950s. Early on in his career, Friedman sought to distance himself from the intensive constructions of the post-war era. He founded the Groupe d'Architecture Mobile (GEAM), whose "mobile architecture" places the user firmly at the centre of the design, in contrast to previous and existing views which, Friedman believed, tended to see users almost as an irrelevance, or at best an abstract identity. The "spatial city" utopia, which is illustrated in this series of drawings, seeks to give form to the basic tenets of mobile architecture. Friedman's adaptable, non-prescriptive structures allow for individual expression and for groups to choose their preferred layouts through a grid structure in which walls and space alternate and exchange: "The city, as a mechanism, is nothing other than a labyrinth: a configuration of starting points and destinations, separated by obstacles". The project's utopian dimension appears in these drawings of cities which might appear more at home in works of fiction, so far removed are they from conventional architectural plans. We are offered a fantasy as food for thought, an object of beauty and inspiration for new ways of living in the cities of the modern world. 1. Quoted in Architecture Expérimentale, 1950-2000, Marie-Anne Brayer (ed.) Collection Frac-Centre, Orléans, Hyx, 2003, p. 214.

The labyrinth is the archetypal space that generates time. Inside the labyrinth, times feels warped in a succession of detours that bring us back to our starting point. In mathematics, spirals, loops and Möbius strips are the physical embodiment of this paradoxical progress through space and time. Each of the works and projects in this section identify with this highly specific dynamic immobility or involution, examples of which are also found in the natural world, in seashells and nebulae, from mystical wanderings to the revolving planets. Frederick Kiesler Exterior view of the Endless House model, 1958 Photograph Gelatin silver print 25.4 x 20.3 cm Photograph: George Barrows Architecture & Design Study Center The Museum of Modern Art, New York © 2011 Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienne / Photo: 2011. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence