Sleep is Just a Bad Habit

Abstract

Modern architecture is dead. The spirit of modern architecture has evaporated. These two ideas, raised by critics such as Charles Jencks were at one point generally believed to be true. This thesis, in part, explores the ambiguity that exists around these issues and its relationship to my own work. The modern spirit refuses to disappear completely and modern architecture survives in many parts of the world. My work as an artist is not intended as a nostalgic review of these alleged losses; through images borrowed from modernity, through fictional stories, texts and cultural hybrids, my work considers the possible meanings of this hybridized, polluted, yet still desirable modernity. Using these topics, I will discuss the specific research carried out during the development of four installations exhibited over the course of the last two years at Stony Brook University galleries and other venues abroad: the project Sleep Is Just A Bad Habit has strong ties to two projects by Buckminster Fuller and his obsession with progress, time and the future; Closer Than We Think connects futuristic architecture and design from the 50s, 60s and 70s with a circular idea of time and with imagery of the future imagined in those years; the death of modern architecture and the iconic housing project Pruit Igoe by Minoru Yamasaki are the basis for the piece Superbloques in its different versions; Circa 1954 allows me to explore the relationship between text and art after Magritte's Ceci n'est pas une pipe and the idea of authorship and the author's signature.