Indianapolis Museum of Art Commissions Ball-Nogues Studio for Efroymson Pavilion Installation Series

Los Angeles-based Ball-Nogues Studio to transform IMA

entrance pavilion with immersive, site-specific installation

INDIANAPOLIS, IN, The Indianapolis Museum of Art today announced that Los Angeles-based Ball-Nogues Studio will create a site-specific, architectural installation as part of the IMA’s Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion series.  Ball-Nogues Studio’s installation will be on view in the IMA’s main entrance from September 3, 2010 to March 6, 2011.

Bridging the disciplines of art, architecture and design, Ball-Nogues Studio is an integrated design and fabrication practice lead by Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues. The studio will create an immersive installation titled Gravity’s Loom that explores the space and structure of the Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion.  Gravity’s Loom, part of the artists’ Suspensions series, will be composed of an array of vibrantly colored hanging strings that span the entire pavilion and generate the appearance of a softly spiraling gossamer surface. This surfacewill twist, contort, and spiral downward through the atrium, transforming the architectural space and re-choreographing the flow of visitors to encourage new interactions with the museum. Each string in the installation will hang from two points on the oval perimeter of the Pavilion, forming curves that respond to the distinctive features of the IMA building.

In developing Gravity’s Loom, Ball-Nogues has allowed the properties and limitations of a given material—in this case, string—guide their work. When the array of strings is hung in the Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion, it will take the shape of an inverted dome through which a patterned color composition will be revealed that represents the artists’ take on Baroque embellishment, Ball and Nogues understand the oval shape of the IMA’s Pavilion to be analogous to the dome of classical Baroque architecture, which historically incorporated surface decoration to blur the distinction between what is architectural, sculptural, and pictorial. The strings of Gravity’s Loom will be painted to represent the imagined plan for a traditional Baroque ceiling pattern—a three dimensional volume that will blur into billows of color and then snap into a focused geometry, depending on the viewer’s vantage point.

“Ball-Nogues’ installation will dramatically re-imagine the Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion,” said Sarah Urist Green, associate curator of contemporary art. “Their singular approach—integrating concept, design, and fabrication—will yield an unforgettable and all-encompassing environment that intricately relates to the space as a thoroughfare and site for assembly and interaction.”

Ball-Nogues likens their method of fabrication to a 21st century application ofIkat, an Indonesian term for the ancient textile process of resist dye.A labor intensive method, Ikat involves the application of vibrant colors to precise locations on individual yarns that, when woven, form a blurry edged pattern. Similarly, Ball-Nogues will color the strings individually in precise locations by using four computer-controlled airbrushes that are part of a programmable machine of their own design. Called the Instal-lator 1 with the Variable Information Atomizing Module, the machine will paint over 30 miles of string and cut it to prescribed lengths determined by an integrated software system. The shape of the thousands of hanging strings will be computed with a mathematical formula, however the piece will be installed at the museum by human hands. Ball-Nogues’ installation will be a remarkable convergence of digital computation, machine fabrication, and hand craft.

“The series title Suspensions refers to the act of disengaging from preconceived notions and intellectual interpretations, if only for a few moments, to apprehend the work with untethered expectation,” said Ball-Nogues. “In the installation at the IMA, there is an intentional duality at play—at one moment the implied surface frames views of the building and then at another obscures it, creating a clouded perspective of the building beyond.”

Ball-Nogues Studio’s sculpture is part of the Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion installation series launched in February 2007 and made possible by a $2.5 million grant from the Indianapolis-based Efroymson Fund.  The works are installed on a rotating basis with a new commission from a different artist approximately every six months.  Artists who have previously exhibited in the space include Tony Feher, Orly Genger and Julianne Swartz, among others.

About BallNogues Studio

Ball-Nogues Studio is comprised of Benjamin Ball (b. 1968, Waterloo, Iowa) and Gaston Nogues (b. 1968, Buenos Aires, Argentina) both of whom live and work in Los Angeles, California.  They met as students at Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), Los Angeles, and are former employees of architect Frank Gehry at Gehry Partners.  Ball earned his Bachelor of Architecture at SCI-Arc in 1994 and worked at Gehry Partners while completing his degree.  After graduating, Ball went on to work as a set and production designer and art director for films, music videos, and commercials.  Nogues earned his Bachelor of Architecture from SCI-Arc in 1993, and moved directly from school into a position in product design and production at Gehry Partners.  Ball and Nogues joined forces in 2005 and since that time have worked collaboratively with wide variety designers, engineers, and consultants.

In 2006, Ball-Nogues Studio was awarded the Best of Category distinction for Environments for their installation Maximilian’s Schell by ID Magazine. Ball-Nogues is the recipient of two Los Angeles AIA Design Awards and Interior Design Magazine’s Best of Year Award for their installation Rip Curl Canyon. In 2007, their installation Liquid Sky was the winner of the Museum of Modern Art / P.S.1’s Young Architect’s Program competition. They are recipients of grants from the Durfee Foundation, the Graham Foundation, UCLA Arts Initiative, Otis College of Design and United States Artists. In 2008, their site-specific installation Echoes Converge appeared at the 11th Venice Biennale of Architecture and they have exhibited at Bejing Biennale, CAPC /arc en rêve centre d’architecture Bordeaux, and the Hong Kong / Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism.  Their installation Feathered Edge debuted at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2009.  The partners have taught in the graduate architecture programs at SCI Arc, UCLA and USC. Their work has appeared in publications worldwide including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Architectural Record, Architectural Digest, Interior Design, Icon, Log 10, Sculpture, and Surface.

About the Efroymson Fund

The Efroymson Family established the Efroymson Fund through the Central Indiana Community Foundation (CICF) to continue its tradition of philanthropic giving to causes in the central Indiana area.  The fund, which contributed the $5 million gift to the IMA that supported the construction of the Pavilion in 2002, was established to benefit several areas of interest including the arts, historic preservation, the environment and projects for the welfare of the Jewish people. It also has provided fellowships to support the work of emerging and established contemporary artists in Indiana.

Contemporary Art at the IMA

The IMA’s robust contemporary art program is evolving as a model for encyclopedic museums as they engage the art of our time.  With a renewed focus on its contemporary collection, the IMA has been actively seeking the works of new and emerging artists through both gift and acquisition, and in addition organizing major traveling exhibitions and commissioning site-specific installations.

Ball-Nogues Studio’s new commissionwill be one of several contemporary art exhibitions and installations premiering at the IMA in 2010. Other exhibitions of contemporary art at the IMA this fall include:

• Body Unbound: Contemporary Couture from the IMA’s Collection(April 17, 2010–January 30, 2011) will examine the many ways designers have manipulated, transformed and liberated the female form since 1960.  The exhibition will feature iconic pieces of contemporary fashion, many recently added to the IMA’s growing collection of Fashion & Textile Arts.
• Jeppe Hein (May 7–September 5, 2010), will be a multi-part exhibition of Copenhagen-based artist Jeppe Hein, consisting of a 4,000-square-foot installation in the IMA’s Forefront Galleries that will feature Hein’s site-specific work Distance, and anew outdoor experiential artwork on the museum grounds, titled Bench Around the Lake, for the inaugural installations in 100 Acres, opening on June 20, 2010.

About the Indianapolis Museum of Art

Encompassing 152 acres of gardens and grounds, the Indianapolis Museum of Art is among the 10 largest encyclopedic art museums in the United States, and features significant collections of African, American, Asian, European and contemporary art, as well as a newly established collection of design arts. The IMA offers visitors an expansive view of arts and culture through its collection of more than 54,000 works of art that span 5,000 years of history from across the world’s continents. The collections include paintings, sculpture, furniture and design objects, prints, drawings and photographs, as well as textiles and costumes.

Recognizing the inherent connections among art, design and nature, the IMA offers visitors experiences at the Museum, in 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, which will be one of the largest contemporary art parks in the United States when it opens in June 2010, and at Oldfields–Lilly House & Gardens, an historic Country Place Era estate on the IMA’s grounds.

The IMA completed a $74 million expansion project in May 2005. The construction added 164,000 square feet to the Museum and includes renovation of 90,000 square feet of existing space. In order to present major exhibitions of its own and to accommodate major traveling exhibitions, the expanded Museum was outfitted with new 10,000-plus-square-foot Clowes Special Exhibition Gallery on the Museum’s first level.  In November 2008, the IMA opened the renovated 600-seat Tobias Theater.  Nicknamed, “The Toby,” the theater is a venue for talks, performances and films.

Located at 4000 Michigan Road, the IMA and Lilly House are open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday and Friday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. The IMA is closed Mondays and Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s days. For more information, call 317-923-1331 or visit www.imamuseum.org.

Media Contacts:

Katie Zarich / Emily LytleIlana B. Simon / Molly Kurzius

IMAResnicow Schroeder Associates

317-920-2650/317-923-1331 x 252720-746-9552 / 212-671-5163

kzarich/ elytle@imamuseum.org isimon / mkurzius@resnicowschroeder.com

Formwork for Cradle under construction 

Model of formwork in the foreground, the actual formwork for Cradle is in the background

Selected articles in print:

• March April issue of Azure, Space Invaders by Mimi Zeiger
• February Issue of Abitare, Shenzhen & Hong Kong by City Biennale of Architecture / Urbanism by Fabrizo Gallanti
• Frame #73, Feathered Edge by Michael Webb
• December 15, 2010, The Guardian, China’s urban art shows off skyscraping ambition by James Wecott
• January 2010 issue of Artforum, “Insiders” by   Rahma Khazam
• February 2010 issue of Dwell, Feathered Edge
• December 210 issue of Interior Design, Maximilian’s Schell
• Span N.01, Feathered Edge
• Volume 31. 2009, Oz Journal, Kansas State University Press, Ball-Nogues Studio, Benjamin Ball
• 2010 / 01, Landscape Architecture, China, Art Installations
• Public Landscape, Hong Kong: Rhhan. 2010
• Public Space, Hong Kong: Rhhan. 2010
• Vol. 171, Hinge, Hong Kong, Floating Design
• Volume 17, number 2, 2010. IDN International Designers Network, Hong Kong, Built to Wear
• April 20, 2010. The Architects Newspaper, Table Setting, Sam Lubell
   

Table Cloth for the Courtyard at Schoenberg Hall

Ball Nogues Studio

Tablecloth will officially open on the evening April 26th with a performance hosted by the Herb Alpert School of Music. Please confirm the start times. 

This project is a collaboration between the UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design, The Herb Alpert School of Music, and UCLA Design Media Arts

It is made possible by the generous support of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and a UCLA Arts Initiative Grant from the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture

Structural engineering and analysis by Buro Happold Los Angeles. Matthew Melnyk

Description:

The installation in the courtyard at Schoenberg Hall will serve as an integrated set piece and backdrop for performance and everyday social interaction. We understand the work as a table cloth to adorn and activate the architecture of the campus. Tables are places of social interaction. Dining tables, specifically, facilitate organization and communication within the typical American home. We see this project like the cloth adorning a dining table; however, at Schoenberg it will embellish a courtyard, an important social hub, and will facilitate community at the scale of the University. It can be used for a variety of community oriented activities, from musical practice to performance, dance to lectures, and from everyday social interaction to academic discussions. It will embellish the courtyard during the spring and part of the summer in 2010. The processes to manufacture, assemble, and dismantle the performance space are sustainable. We have utilized a holistic approach to design, manufacturing and re-purposing of building materials; a process we term “Cross Manufacturing.”

The Table Cloth will be comprised of hundreds of individual low, coffee-style tables and three legged stools. Each of these household items will be a unique product in its own right and can be taken home by members of the UCLA community after the project is over. The tables and stools link together collectively to create a “fabric” that hangs from the east wall of the courtyard. When the Table Cloth meets the ground, it unrolls to form an intimate “in the round” performance area. Visitors can sit on the tables and stools within this area.

The installation can be configured in two ways:

Stage. A small stage platform will be at the center of the crescent shaped seating area. This stage will be 18 inches high and will only be present during organized performances. When one is performing some parts of the stage will stored.No Stage. Performances may take place on the ground anywhere within the courtyard. Approximately 25 individual “free floating” stools can be distributed throughout the performance area as desired. 

The configurations described above are only suggestions of how an audience and the performers’ relationship can be mediated by the installation: the function of the Table Cloth is open ended. We hope that performers, choreographers, directors (to name a few examples) will invent uses and safe abuses for it. Perhaps, some performers will develop programs specifically for the space and will collaborate with other members of the UCLA community to create works showcase there.

This installation may not only serve as a backdrop and marker of a place for performance, but also can be a set or prop in the performance. It can be a neutral backdrop or provocative presence. It creates a context for interaction, perhaps inspiring a creative process from its conception to execution. To reduce liability there is to be no climbing on the Table Cloth, no standing on the seating elements and no standing on the stage unless one is a part of an organized performance.

Because of the work’s size and the materials used, its presence within the space will help reduce reverberation and alter acoustical phenomena within the space.

Construction will begin at Ball-Nogues Studio in downtown Los Angeles during March followed by onsite assembly during the break between winter and spring quarters. Within the weeks before the break, campus facility personnel will be onsite to make preparatory alterations to the building. These will include drilling holes in the courtyard floor and welding tabs onto beams above two of the window openings on the east wall. We invite students from the University to help (assuming risk assessment authorities will allow this) and it is our hope that students from the School of the Arts, AUD, DMA, and the Herb Alpert School of Music will contribute. Furthermore, the construction process should help generate anticipation and enthusiasm for the project among students and faculty.

Upon dismantling, the seating and tables will be given away to the UCLA community. Our aim is for the project’s stakeholders to help promote this process by turning it into an event – perhaps accompanied by a performance.

Project Theory:

Spatial installations represent a growing phenomenon within our culture. There is a new demand for “instant” architecture. We see this in entire environments which become advertisements, like subway platforms; stage sets; window displays; and event spectacles. They have become forums for the production of architecturally scaled structures and spaces that exist for only a limited period. Our installation explores the making of structures which produce very little waste when their usefulness as architecture is complete. While there is an increasing interest among architects in recycling and repurposing architecture, our project moves beyond this approach to consider life cycle through the development of a “cross manufacturing” strategy. Cross manufacturing is a design and production approach that considers objects as part of a continuum. After the structure has served its use as a performance space, the components comprising the installation will be dismantled to become smaller scaled commodities, immediately available as coveted products – in this case tables and seating. Unlike recycling, which down-cycles material into a less valuable state, this scenario foresees small products made from the parts of a larger product (the installation itself).

“Diversified series” is a fitting description for the resulting products rather than the “standardized series” that typically results from a mass production approach. Each of the tables and seating elements will be industrially manufactured but will still be unique, contrasting the anonymity inherent in most industrially manufactured goods. At the end of the life of the installation, the approximately 500 tables and stools, no two alike, will be given away to the UCLA community.

By using a consumer good as its basic building block, the project expands and critiques notions of “green” architecture. As a visual concept, the installation serves as a symbolic gesture of sustainability and a poetic reminder that the buildings and pavilions we construct although seemingly timeless, are actually impermanent: frozen moments in an ongoing flow of products and materials. Outside of its environmental commentary, the installation dramatically re-contextualizes consumer products – symbols of mass consumption and standardization– into alternative gestures of hope and one of a kind manufacturing.

Spontaneous Schooling Exhibition 18 June 2010 – 4 July 2010.  Opening Event 18 June, 6 – 11pm Roundtable discussion on workshops 6 – 7pm 3.01 Tea Building, 5 – 13 Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6JJ Sponsored by Nous 4m and Derwent London With the participation of hundreds of tutors and thousands of students, this exhibition will showcase the outcomes of architectural workshops around the world. The innovative exhibition design will display images of international workshops on faceted orbs that will hang as a field of information, interwoven with installations from workshops re-created in the space. At the opening of the exhibition a round table discussion will be held about the future of workshops and their role in the discipline. While workshops are rapidly becoming an important platform for experimentation and the production of ideas, they have never been critiqued outside of specific reviews, or as a broader methodology in architectural teaching. Nor have workshops ever been exhibited together and discussed as a key element of architectural education. Out of our own curiosity to expose and review workshops came ‘Spontaneous Schooling’. It is an exhibition and publication that aims to explore why workshops exist and provides some insight into their role in architectural education. Spontaneous Schooling will exhibit work that is different from that displayed at end of year shows or typical polished architectural exhibitions. The work is truly presented as an experiment or study. But it is precisely this unrefined quality that makes workshops popular. The Spontaneous Schooling exhibition will show some of the actual installations, drawings, and media created in the workshops featured. The parallel publication is to be used as a resource for tutors, and will explain in detail how the workshops were run. This is the first exhibition for Nous 4M (www.nous4m.com), a collaboration between Nous Gallery (www.nousgallery.com) and 4M Group (www.4mgroup.co.uk), a London based architecture, construction, development and research company. Nous 4M was created as a resource for architects, designers and creatives to provide fabrication and production facilities for professionals and tutors, and affordable professional office space. In September, its 540m2 fabrication space will open, featuring 5 axis and 3 axis CNC milling machines and space for setting up workshops, furniture viewings, installations, small film sets,and mock-ups for buildings. Nous 4M will also be hosting workshops from London and abroad at its facilities. Also, Nous 4M will be letting affordable office space to up and coming firms, providing all the resources of a larger office. Please check www.nousgallery.com for opening times and directions.

LADTF Website

DIGITAL PRACTICE SERIES 2010 series info

The Los Angeles Design Technology Forum, in association with the AIA|LA Technology in Architectural Practice Committee, is pleased to announce the third event in a monthly series focusing on the intersection of Design and Information Technology. This lecture event will explore the intersection of digital methods with physical reality through the work of Ball-Nogues and BplusU.

LECTURE:
Digital :: Physical           Ball-Nogues and BplusU

DATE: Thursday 17 June 2010,   FREE
TIME: Lecture 7pm,   6pm Wine, snacks, and social mixing
WHERE: This event will be at UCLA Architecture and Urban Design, DeCafe in Perloff Hall. Parking is $10, please see this link for information: parking map.
Post event libations and filler @ To be announced location

 Please RSVP to general@ladesigntech.org

Exact time yet to be determined

Text from UCI promotional materials.

The UC Irvine Studio Art Lecture Series “Perfect Lovers” attempts to complicate the traditional grad school lecture by pairing artists, curators, and culture-makers in conversation with each other. We want to offer our program and the public the vital event of seeing artists discuss their work in a more spontaneous way; and give artists the opportunity to share their work, interests and obsessions in dialogue.

As the clocks in Felix Gonzalez-Torres “Perfect Lovers” move in sync and out of sync, we believe that pairing speakers whose practices may coincide and conflict can better highlight the stakes and debates of contemporary practice.

http://www.welcometolace.org/events/view/lace-benefit-art-auction-2010/ 

CURATORSAndrew Berardini, Barbara Bestor, Andrea Bowers, Kristin Calabrese & Joshua Aster, Carolyn Castaño, Tim Christian, David Dick, Tomory Dodge, Robert Fontenot & Glenn R. Phillips, Brooke Hodge, Julian Hoeber, Onya Hogan-Finlay, Jeff Kopp, Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer, Kim McCarty, Jamie Rosenthal, Joy Silverman, Monique van Genderen and LACE.

ARTISTS
Irina Alimanestianu, Carmen Argote, Kristin Calabrese & Joshua Aster, Darren Bader, Ball-Nogues Studio, Louise Bonnet, Heather Brown, Andrew Bush, Josh Callaghan, Terry Chatkupt, Susan Cianciolo, Matt Connors, Carlee Fernandez, Gary Garay, Kathryn Garcia, Jill Giegerich, Marsha Ginsberg, Sayre Gomez, April Greiman, Sherin Guirguis, Emlie Halpern, Naotaka Hiro, Hadley Holliday, Margaret Honda, Charles Irvin, Alice Cisternino Jackel, Adam Janes, Charles Karubian, Matt Keegan, Soo Kim, Karen Kimmel, Olga Koumoundouros, Eli Langer, Annie Lapin, Joseph Lee, Spencer Lewis, CK Lyons, Euan MacDonald, Jay McCafferty, Ian McDonald, Sandeep Mukherjee, D’Ette Nogle, William J. O’Brien, Michele O’Marah, Eamon Ore-giron, Claudia Padrucci, Heather Rasmussen, Sarada Rauch, Erwin Redl, Laura Riboli, Rebecca Ripple, Brett Cody Rogers, Lezley Saar, Shizu Saldamando, Sergio Sergio, Jeff Sheng, Lily Skolnick Simonson, Don Suggs, Ivan Terestchenko, Erin Trefry, Jeffrey Vallance, Ingrid von Sydow, Sage Vaughn, Mary Weatherford, Ken Weathersby , Bari Ziperstein (list in formation)

The evening will debut a new Wall Work Commission by Nick Lowe, and feature a collaborative performance by Dorian Wood / Killsonic with Ryan Heffington / Fingered Dancers. Costumes by Franc Fernandez.

TICKETS
General $50 advance / $75 door
Silver Circle $500 Duo / $250 Solo (Includes a year’s worth of membership benefits. Learn more here.)
LACE Bundle $500 (10 tickets) 

Micol Hebron presents “Now Playing in Los Angeles”, an evening of videos and performances that address notions of ‘Play’ and all that the word entails. Featuring live performances by Dawn Kasper and John Kilduff, of “Let’s Paint Tv”, and a program of videos by local artists who address notions of Play in it’s various iterations.

Come Play With Us!

Downtown ArtWalk
Thursday May 13, 2010 7 – 10pm
Ball Nogues Studio, 410 S. Spring, Los Angeles, 90013