Off the Wall
Exhibition Design
The Jewish
Museum of New York
| Client |
The
Jewish Museum of New York |
| Design team |
Esther
Sperber, Guy Zucker, Yuteki Dozono, Nick Messerlian, Terrence
Seah |
| Date |
2008 |
Constructed
out of art packing materials, the design for “Off the Wall”
follows the concept of the exhibition where traditional materials
– the museum’s permanent collection, or its’
music archives - are recycled and reinterpreted to create new
works of art. Similar to the way the art reinterprets the content
of the museum, its art collection, the design reinterprets the
context of the museum, its art handling and shipping. The foam
and cardboard from the back rooms of the museum are brought to
the front of the house and into the space of the gallery, giving
new meaning to the internal mechanisms of the museum.
In a literal
translation of the exhibition title, the design provides only
‘Off the Wall’ platforms for the display of the art
as well as the artists at work. Three different materials were
used in the three galleries responding to the type of art in each
space:
- The Pixilated Mattress - A landscape of gray foam blocks,
for the sound artists and a lounge space.
- The Pedestal Mountains - A tactile series of pedestals
from white ester foam, which heighten the materiality of the fashion
design and multimedia art display.
- The Display Canyon - A cut through layers of honeycomb
cardboard displaying both the flat-screen media and projected
art along with the artists in a continuous intimate exhibit.
Exhibition
design is possibly one of the more extreme cases of short lived
architecture. As such it provides an opportunity for integrating
the life expectancy of the project as a driving force for the
design. The before and afterlife of the project become crucial
participants in the design process where the use of ephemeral
materials (the foam and cardboard) merely shift the matrix of
the routine operations of the museum.
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