November 16, 2006, 6:30-8:00pm
Mark
Robbins booklaunch and lecture "Households: Reconfigured
Interiors of Iconic Modern Residencies in Amsterdam and Rotterdam"
at Center for Architecture, New York
Location:
AIA New York Chapter
Center for Architecture
536 LaGuardia Place
New York, NY 10012
Registration necessary, click here
This event
is part of Five
Dutch Days
The enduring
allure of other people’s lives and homes fuels the pages
of glossy shelter magazines. Fascinated by the seductive draw
of the carefully styled and cropped views in their pages, artist
and architect Mark Robbins toured the homes of friends, family
members, colleagues, and acquaintances in search of more personally
styled and less self-consciously arranged homes. Photographed
over a three year period, HOUSEHOLDS, to be published by Monacelli
Press on June 9 (152 pages; 150 color photographs; hardcover/
$40) is the compelling result; an unexpected series of people
in their houses and gardens presenting film-strip narratives
about people, architecture and “lifestyle.” Many
of the featured households were documented in The Netherlands,
as a result of an invitation by Aaron Betsky, former Director
of the Netherlands Architecture Institute. In addition to an
introduction by Mark Robbins, HOUSEHOLDS features essays by
Bill Horrigan, Curator of Film and Video at the Wexner Center
for the Arts, and Julie Lasky, Editor-in-Chief of ID Magazine.
The range
of homes and people in HOUSEHOLDS includes a man, woman and
baby at a writers’ colony, two men in a Long Island beach
estate, an elderly husband and wife at the edge of a family
compound, a dean in the historic house provided by her university,
an extended family living in a modernist housing block in Holland.
All suggest Robbins’ obsession with reading the intricate
details which describe our lives. The artist’s observation
of ritual and décor, identity and the body are at the
heart of HOUSEHOLDS.
The purposefully
arranged sequence of images that capture each household share
a resemblance to the varied traditions of portraiture, from
the life-size figures of Pompeian wall frescoes, to multi-paneled
altarpieces and contemporary high-gloss ads from Gap and Benetton.
Within each composition the relationship between figure and
environment can be ambiguous – reinforcing or confounding
expectations. The collection as a whole comments on present-day
customs and social patterns in all their striking complexity.
It questions received notions about domesticity, and the ways
in which we occupy space and configure our homes and ourselves.
About
Mark Robbins
Robbins’ design and photography work, which bridges the
fields of art and architecture, has long focused on the complex
social and political forces that contribute to the built environment.
He is a recipient of the Rome Prize from the American Academy
in Rome and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced
Study at Harvard and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He
has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts,
the Graham Foundation and the State Arts Councils of New York
and Ohio. His installations and design projects have been exhibited
nationally and internationally. Robbins is currently Dean of
Syracuse University’s School of Architecture and was previously
Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts and
Curator of Architecture at the Wexner Center for the Arts in
Columbus, OH.
Click here
to download an introduction (pdf) by Mark Robbins
Click here
to download a Q&A (pdf) with Mark Robbins
HOUSEHOLDS
by Mark Robbins
Publication date: June 9, 2006
152 pages; hardcover; 11 X 9 inches, 150 color photographs
$40; ISBN 1-58093-164-2
Contact:
For more information, to receive a review copy of HOUSEHOLDS,
or to arrange an interview with Mark Robbins, please contact:
Lottchen Shivers
Tel.: 845-876-8791
lottchen@earthlink.net
