Beatrice Galilee

Adrián Villar Rojas

Celebrated Argentinian artist Adrián Villar Rojas is known for his site-specific sculptural installations. For The Theater of Disappearance, the artist mines The Met’s collection, drawing on the five thousand years of world history within its galleries, to create an elaborate ahistorical work. Set atop the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, Villar Rojas’s installation transforms the space into a performative diorama, where banquet tables occupy an oversize black-and-white checkerboard floor punctuated by sculptures that fuse together human figures and artifacts found within the museum. The resulting juxtapositions put forth a radical reinterpretation of museum practices. This illustrated book is the fifth edition in a series that documents and contextualizes The Met’s annual rooftop commissions. The introductory essay by Beatrice Galilee explores the conceptual framework that informs Villar Rojas’s remarkable commission as well as his interventions around the world. While exploring the Museum, Villar Rojas took thousands of photographs of objects and moments of interest. A selection of these images is featured here alongside the artist’s commentary, offering a unique visual diary of Villar Rojas’s thought process as he developed this arresting installation.

The Theater of Disappearance, Adrián Villar Rojas

The Roof Garden Commission

An important and fascinating collection of original projects by unique thinkers in the world of architecture and spatial design Architectural practice today goes far beyond the design and construction of buildings -- the most exciting, forward-thinking architecture is also found in digital landscapes, art, apps, films, installations, and virtual reality. This remarkable book features projects -- surprising, beautiful, outrageous, and sometimes even frightening -- that break rules and shatter boundaries. In this timely book, the work of award-winning architects, designers, artists, photographers, writers, filmmakers, and researchers -- all of whom synthesize and reflect our spatial environments -- comes together for the first time.

Radical Architecture of the Future

Sheena Wagstaff

The British artist Cornelia Parker is known for her large, site-specific installations. Often composed of ordinary objects, her works makes the familiar extraordinary, whimsical, and even poignant. Her new project, Transitional Object (PsychoBarn), conceived and created for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, merges two iconic examples of American architecture, the red barn and the infamous mansion on a hill from Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece Psycho (itself inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper). The work meditates on the tension between these iconic structures and subtly suggests how architecture generates conflicting emotional states. This beautifully illustrated book is the forth in a series that documents and contextualizes The Met's annual rooftop commissions. The introductory essay by Beatrice Galilee follows the process of crafting this work, tracing the myriad psychological associations that are embedded in architectural spaces, The interview between the artist and Sheena Wagstaff provides an insightful discussion of Parker's wide-ranging career and explores the conceptual framework that informs her remarkable commission.

Beatrice Galilee

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