Maximilian’s Schell, the project that launched Ball-Nogues and won an AIA award, will be featured at the Material’s & Applications Retrospective opening at CSULB in January 2014
Materials & Applications: Building Something (Beyond) Beautiful, Projects 2002 – 2013
January 25 – April 13, 2014
The University Art Museum partners with the artist-led experimental architecture and design organization Materials & Applications (M&A) to present Materials & Applications: Building Something (Beyond) Beautiful, Projects 2002 – 2013. This exhibition is a capstone to more than ten years of effort on the part of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit to advance new and underused ideas in art, architecture, and landscape.
M&A related activities kick off this fall when local community members are invited to join Oliver Hess, director emeritus of M&A, and students from CSULB Design Professor Heather Barker’s course Environmental Communication Design in a three-part workshop coordinated by Arts Council for Long Beach, which will culminate in a “crowd-sourced” site-specific installation on the CSULB campus in January. The installation is called MatterApp: Pyramidial (MA:P). You can follow the progress of MA:P from classroom, to crowdsourcing at community workshops, to its construction near the Walter Pyramid on campus on the UAM Tumblr page.
About Materials & Applications: Located in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, M&A is an experimental site and community “pocket park.” Begun by Jenna Didier as a collaborative endeavor to advance a vision of architecture and design as social catalyst, she and the M&A exhibitors have striven to raise the conceptual standards of public art by questioning not only what is possible in the built environment, but also who participates in its development. M&A received a Spirit Award in 2009 from the Neutra Foundation. The American Institute of Architects presented M&A with three Design Honor Awards: in 2006 for two installations–the 2005 project Maximilian’s Schell by Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues and the 2006 project Here There Be Monsters by Workshop LEVITAS and DidierHess–and in 2007 for Michael Fox and Juintow Lin’s project Bubbles. For ID Magazine’s 52nd Annual Design Review, jurors Michael Arad, Elizabeth Diller, and Lindy Roy honored the Ball and Nogues installation Maximilian’s Schell with the designation “Best Environment.”
Organized by UAM Curator Kristina Newhouse, Materials & Applications: Building Something (Beyond) Beautiful, Projects 2002 – 2013 and the MA:P activities have been awarded a 2013 NEA Art Works: Design grant.
