Magda
10-07-2010, 04:24 AM
This is going to be a thread about the exhibition (http://www.wallraf.museum/index.php?id=195&L=1) "Auf Leben und Tod" (Do or Die) at Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne which contains a hommage to "House of Leaves"
The exhibition is an interplay between painting (old masters) and modern photography, casting a view on human life from birth to death. The images are installed on dark brown background in an abstract kind of trompe l’œil which expands the room into an additional dimension.
Towards the end of the exhibition, right before old age and death, there is a room of its own room called "House of Leaves". It contains photography that somehow can be looked at as related to HoL: A staircaise looking like covered with human skin, a transforming face covered with mud, a blurred human shape at a window frame, a Rorschach face, two eyes in the darkness, and more. Some of the pictures are described in the accompanying catalogue. This catalogue also has a chapter that explains how the room bigger in the inside than the ouside went into the exhibition concept, via the trompe l'oeil.
Cologne is full of the debris of history. Whenever one plans to build a house right in the center of the town one will have a good chance to strike the relics of ancient Roman to medieval buildings that are witness of the history of the town - and those relics often are integrated into the new architecture. The same with Wallfraf-Richartz Museum whose new locations (2001) also were built on archeologically relevant ground. Accordingly the room which is sort of the centre of the exhibition, "House of Leaves", contains the "House of the red door" which has been a pest house in the 13th century. The relics form sort of an entrance which can be an allusion to the entrance to the very House.
The exhibition catalogie is devided in a text part and an image part, the latter opened with the words "This is for you", written in red Courier font.
I think "This is for you" is reason enough not to post the exhibition thread in the HoL-forums but exactly here, at the other side of the House.
The exhibition is an interplay between painting (old masters) and modern photography, casting a view on human life from birth to death. The images are installed on dark brown background in an abstract kind of trompe l’œil which expands the room into an additional dimension.
Towards the end of the exhibition, right before old age and death, there is a room of its own room called "House of Leaves". It contains photography that somehow can be looked at as related to HoL: A staircaise looking like covered with human skin, a transforming face covered with mud, a blurred human shape at a window frame, a Rorschach face, two eyes in the darkness, and more. Some of the pictures are described in the accompanying catalogue. This catalogue also has a chapter that explains how the room bigger in the inside than the ouside went into the exhibition concept, via the trompe l'oeil.
Cologne is full of the debris of history. Whenever one plans to build a house right in the center of the town one will have a good chance to strike the relics of ancient Roman to medieval buildings that are witness of the history of the town - and those relics often are integrated into the new architecture. The same with Wallfraf-Richartz Museum whose new locations (2001) also were built on archeologically relevant ground. Accordingly the room which is sort of the centre of the exhibition, "House of Leaves", contains the "House of the red door" which has been a pest house in the 13th century. The relics form sort of an entrance which can be an allusion to the entrance to the very House.
The exhibition catalogie is devided in a text part and an image part, the latter opened with the words "This is for you", written in red Courier font.
I think "This is for you" is reason enough not to post the exhibition thread in the HoL-forums but exactly here, at the other side of the House.