The Frederick Kiesler library

Set up by CuratorLab with the help of Konstfack Library.

The Frederick Kiesler library at Tensta Konsthall presents a wide range of titles, stretching from artist biographies, manifestos, science and philosophy books, to writings about and by Kiesler. With this selection the library opens up for cross readings and cross connections through different subjects and people, all connected to Kiesler’s own multidisciplinary body of work.

A specific color-coding system has been constructed for this particular project, each representing a given subject or personal connection to Kiesler. Every title appearing in the library will be assigned one or more color to highlight these connections and how they are associated with Kiesler.

The selection of titles for the library is the collective effort of Valentina Sansone, Kim McAleese, Sam Perry, Patrik Haggren, Dorota Michalska and Jacob Hurtig, from the CuratorLab course at Konstfack. Jacob Hurtig has also constructed the color-coding system and been the coordinator for the library.

Special thanks to Konstfack Library for a helping hand and for lending out books for this project, and to the Kiesler foundation for sending us their whole catalogue of titles.

 

Loose connections, strong sympathies

Curated by Patrik Haggren, Mikhail Lylov, Dorota Michalska

loose connections, strong sympathies consists of a series of panels focusing on the hybrid status of modernity in the body work of Frederick Kiesler. Through a constellation of images we seek to place Kiesler’s projects in a broad spectrum of scientific discoveries, psychological experiments and mechanical laws. Rather than following a strictly methodological approach, we propose a more imaginative montage of possible connections. The panels tackle some of Kiesler’s main obsessions such as the idea of a non-functionalist infinity, visual correlations without symbolic connections and of a total environment inhabited by human and non–human beings.

The projects aims to actualize Kiesler’s correalism as an interdisciplinary approach. Focusing on connections we reach towards a dense reality of shifting boundaries and changing identities. The project is developed as an intense research laboratory about architecture as an accumulation of energy, movement, hybrids and speculative science.

 

Mikhail Lylov

Born 1989 in Voronezh/Russia, Mikhail Lylov is an independent artist and curator. He lives in Berlin. The practice of Mikhail Lylov is in vicinity of the discussions within present day philosophical anthropology and his film works are interested in the role of abstraction in affective composition of power.

 

Temporary projects

 

Building a figurative utopia

A series of events at The Frederick Kiesler Library

Curated by Valentina Sansone

Frederick Kiesler’s architectures are inspired by life: his buildings are based on organic, open formulae. As well as Kiesler, Ettore Sottsass defined new radical ways of living through design as “a way of discussing society, politics, eroticism, food and even design. At the end, it is a way of building a possible figurative utopia or metaphor about life”.

Departing from a reflection on Kiesler’s visionary architecture and its relationship with the radical architecture and design movements in the late 1960s, a series of events especially conceived for the project by CuratorLab will activate The Frederick Kiesler Library, over the course of the major exhibition at Tensta Konsthall. Invited artists and scholars reflect on utopian visions in art, architecture, life and design: the series of public events at The Frederick Kiesler Library represents an attempt to further analyse the fruitful exchanges between art and architecture over the course of history and poses new questions on the medium of sculpture today.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

3pm: Ian Kiaer on Frederick Kiesler A skype session with British artist Ian Kiaer

3.30 – 4.30pm: Florian Medicus: “Kiesler’s Endless House revisited” A lecture on ‘endlessness’ in the history of art and architecture

The work of Frederick Kiesler has fascinated Ian Kiaer for many years. Kiaer introduces Kiesler’s work and explains the reasons why he has developed a new series of sculptures departing from Kiesler’s Tooth House. After the Skype session, the lecture “Kiesler’s Endless House revisited” by Florian Medicus (University of Applied Arts, Vienna) will follow. Medicus looks at the concept of ‘endlessness’ in Kiesler’s work, exploring its ramifications for art and architecture. Is it possible to escape from a traditional aesthetics when dealing with the idea of ‘endless’?

Tooth House brings together a series of works by Ian Kiaer (UK, 1971. Lives and works in London) made between 2005 and 2014. The title is taken from the work of Frederick Kiesler, a scheme designed in the late 1940s for a residence integrated into its environment, modelled on a tooth – that part of the body that grows twice and is a constant reminder of our primordial past.

Ian Kiaer studied at the Royal College of Art and the Slade School of Art. Selected solo exhibitions include: the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2014); Centre International d’art et du Paysage, Vassivière (2013); Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2012); Kunstverein, Munich (2010). The exhibition catalogue Tooth House, published on the occasion of the artist’s solo show at the Henry Moore Institute (20 March – 22 June 2014) is available at the Frederick Kiesler Library.

Florian Medicus (University of Applied Arts, Vienna) is an architect and curator. He is currently editing a book on Kiesler’s Endless House in collaboration with The Kiesler Foundation (to be released in May 2015), featuring texts by Sanford Kwinter, Gerd Zillner, Jill Meissner, Laura McGuire, Wolf D. Prix, Brian Hatton, Jürgen Meyer H., Tomas Saraceno, Ian Kiaer, Andrea Zittel, Olafur Eliasson, and Hans Hollein amongst the others.

Thanks to: The Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (UK); Institute of Architecture, University of Applied Arts, Vienna.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

4pm – 5pm: Andrea Zittel: How To Live? Video documentation of Zittel’s lecture at MAK, Vienna (2013)

Recipient of the 2012 Kiesler Prize, the American artist Andrea Zittel elucidates about her comprehensive work. Zittel’s “Social Sculptures” cross the boundaries between art, architecture, design and technology and the attempt to combine personal experiences with important social issues. “Perhaps what inspires me most about Frederick Kiesler is how his brain worked. He was interested in things like matter, interacting forces, human need, continuous motion and elastic spaces. He felt that every object in the universe should be considered in relation to its environment, and he described this as an exchange of interacting forces, which he called co-reality and the science of relationships.” (Andrea Zittel, New York 2012)

The video is the documentation of the lecture that took place on June 5, 2013 at the MAK Lecture Hall in Vienna.

Andrea Zittel (Escondido, USA, 1965) graduated from San Diego State University in 1988, obtaining a BFA in “Painting and Sculpture” and an MFA in “Sculpture” from Rhode Island School of Design in 1990. After studying, Andrea Zittel moved to New York, where she founded her artistic company A-Z (later A-Z East). In order to combat isolation in the midst of the city, she began to integrate artists and neighbours into the company as of 1996. Zittel moved to the Californian desert nearby Los Angeles in 2000. She purchased a piece of land in Joshua Tree with a deserted homestead cabin and founded A-Z West. Zittel’s main endeavour was to develop a new building technology in order to adjust better to the desert climate.

Thanks to: MAK, Vienna.

 

Lunch Reading Session on Friendship with artist Céline Condorelli moderated by Kim McAleese, CuratorLab 

Date: Wednesday 11 February 2015

Time: 1.30 – 3pm

Artist Céline Condorelli works with art and architecture as a means to develop structures for ‘support’. Support can be defined as a type of relationship between people, objects, social forms and political structures, or in purely architectural terms. Condorelli elaborates on this notion of ‘support structures’ also by relating her practice back to the idea of friendship, and how integral it has been in the development of her artistic work and her research.

“Friendship then, is perhaps a condition of work in my practice—even though it may never be the actual subject of the work, however close it is to a long-term object of my practice, support—but a formative, operational condition that works on multiple, simultaneous levels.”

Curatorlab at Konstfack have been invited to populate the Kiesler library, which will be present for the duration of the exhibition at Tensta Konsthall. Kim McAleese has selected a number of texts charting the discourse around Condorelli’s practice, focusing on friendship and support.

Members of the public are invited to join the lunchtime reading group on 11 February, where Condorelli and McAleese will present a selection of texts from the library, and will discuss them in more detail.

No booking is required, and this is a free event.