Attention all diorama-obsessed individuals! This week is your last chance to see Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities at the Museum of Art and Design on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Designed by Incorporated Architecture & Design and organized by Chief Curator David McFadden, the exhibition collects a number of “mini-environments” by contemporary artists from all over the world.

After the break, I chat with Incorporated‘s Adam Rolston on the challenges of designing the exhibit.

Otherworldly explores the model as a medium, featuring artists who work in three dimensions, standing sculptures, subjects for photographs, and the basis for animated videos. Each of these tiny constructed worlds is realized through an intense engagement with materiality and a meticulous attention to detail. The show is interesting because it contains both finished and “working” models, embracing the notion of the physical model as a medium in the midst of a renaissance – in architecture, but also in art, design, and craft.

The show posed a unique set of problems to exhibition designers Incorporated. Most of the pieces are physical objects, but they’re also accompanied by photographs and 2D images. Thus, the challenge for Incorporated Managing Director Adam Rolston and his crew was how to frame the diversity of representational modes with a cohesive spatial sequence.

Adam comments that the models themselves were difficult to display, saying, “rather than using traditional lighting, we found that many of the projects had shadows painted within their mini spaces.” Incorporated echoed the tromp o’leil effect, painting subtle false shadows onto the freestanding walls they built to accommodate photographs and drawings. A complex lighting scheme allows each piece to appear as an individual object within the greater narrative of the show.

Says Adam, “Good exhibition design is in many ways a supporting actor: the better the supporting actor understands its role, the better the ability for the lead to shine. For us as architects, the client is the curator. We develop spaces that will best allow the viewer to perceive each piece as part of a story being told by the curator.”

“Held within what hung open and made to lie without escape,” Gregory Euclide, 2011.

“Canal St. Cross-Section,” Alan Wolfson, 2009-2010.

“Interior view of Consolidated Life,” David Lawrey and Jaki Middleton, 2010.

Holly Hotchner, MAD’s Nanette L. Laitman Director, writes that the exhibit “furthers MAD’s deep commitment to eroding arbitrary distinctions between artistic disciplines.” Gregory Euclide’s site specific installation is a highlight, mixing model, painting and landscape. Other artists showing works within the exhibition are Charles Simonds, Charles Matton, Joe Fig, Thomas Doyle, Rick Araluce and David Opdyke. The Small Realities website allows visitors to learn more about pieces in Otherwordly exhibition and to submit their own small world works.

by Stephen Killion

posted in New Projects

tagged Chicago, exhibition design, incorporated, models, museum, museum of art and design, otherworldy

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