The fifth part of Beauty Unrealized focused on the potential of change in the already existing structures, whether they manifest itself as language (Pisano) or as architecture (Geers, Gandolfi). In her explorations of abstract sculptures, Falke Pisano searches for a speculative language that could turn material objects into structures of different, sometimes immaterial nature. Liberating the object from the limits of its previous existence, Pisano examines the possible answers for the question of how an object can exist within different conditions. Two architects, Kersten Geers and Emiliano Gandolfi, used the structure of a presentation in order to investigate the limits and potentials of beauty in terms of space, staged through the use of words, visuals and sounds. Their main interest was in the newly achieved perception of spatiality and the ways in which it has been organized into a more coherent discourse within the language of architecture.

24.02.2007

Falke Pisano: Extracts (Objects)

The starting point for Falke Pisano’s works is her interest in the constructive potential of thoughts, as well as the possibilities to create and resolve problems within the field of language using its internal systems of logic. The work presented at the PSWAR gallery is based on the books from the surrounding library. Inversing Italo Calvino’s description of Lucretius’ “De Rerum natura” as “the first great work of poetry in which knowledge of the world tends to dissolve the solidity of the world, leading to the perception of all that is infinitely minute, light and mobile”¹ Pisano extracted from the books qualities, attributes, and forms.² Those three elements define together a series of objects and therefore reconstruct a potential material origin of the knowledge comprised in these collections of writings.

<sup>1. Italo Calvino, Six Memo’s for the Next Millennium. Vintage Books NY 1993 (©1988 Estate of Italo Calvino), p. 8
2. Ibid. p. 9</sup>

25.02.2007

Presentation and discussion:

Kersten Geers and Emiliano Gandolfi: The Shape of Time

A newly achieved perception of spatiality and the definition of a discourse around means of architectural signs will be the topic of a conversation between the art critic Emiliano Gandolfi and the architect Kersten Geers. The appearance of space is unconceivable without a dissertation on time. Architecture is not necessarily a temporal experience, but time, through its evolutionary cultural process, defines what we should consider beautiful at a given moment. Within Robert Schumann’s poetic beauty, based on humans’ conscious and creative intervention in the nature, and the Japanese definition of wabi-sabi that sees beauty as imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete, our perception flows, in various constructions of signs, through space.
Emiliano Gandolfi is an architect and curator of the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam, where he developed several exhibitions and public events such as Newer Orleans, DynamiCity – Tactics for a Changing Metropolis, and Spectacular City – Photographing the Future.
Kersten Geers is an architect and before 2002, when he opened his own studio with David van Severen, he has worked for several architectural bureaus (Maxwan/Max.1 Architecten and Neutelings Riedijk Architects). Geers has published various articles on architecture and fiction in numerous professional journals and since 2003 he has been a tutor and guest critic at various institutions in the Netherlands and Belgium.