In addition to the exhibition in the Thannhauser and Annex Level 4 galleries, 'Contemplating the Void' will be accompanied by a comprehensive exhibition website, which will document each submission and feature introductory essays texts by Nancy Spector and David van der Leer.
The exhibition will also function as a 50th anniversary fundraiser for the museum. Many of the works on view will be sold through silent auction conducted during a benefit event on March 4, 2010, with an online component so that those who are unable to attend may participate.
Among the many works in the exhibition are projects by Zaha Hadid, Toyo Ito, Richard Meier, Daniel Libeskind en Lebbeus Woods.The Dutch offices that contemplated the void are:
- Joris Laarman Studio,
- Maurer United Architects,
- MVRDV,
- Powerhouse Company,
- Studio Job,
- UNStudio,
- West 8.
‘Full Half Moon’ by Maurer United Architects
Maurer United Architects [MUA] designed an installation situated in the central rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. “The sculptural void in the New York Guggenheim Museum’s reminds one of the plastic effect that is created by the picture of the first footprint on the moon. This idea has been the inspiration for placing a FULL HALF MOON in this space”, explains MUA. The installation consists of a glass ball with a diameter of 12 meters that is completely filled with moon dust. The glass ball’s lower half is 100% reflective and thus generates a convex picture of the concave void.
'Triptych' by Powerhouse Company
As a response to the rotunda Powerhouse Company created Triptych (Repression - Anarchy - Pleasure). Nanne de Ru and Charles Bessard explain: “The overwhelming rotunda is, for us, a testimony to the pure power of space. How to grasp the paradoxical nature of this architectural monument? How to interpret a space so rigid in its organization yet so open in its experience? The extreme spatial experience of the rotunda is for us a mix of repression, anarchy, and pleasure.
As for repression, the central void and spiralling ramp reminds us of what Jeremy Bentham, inventor of the Panopticon prison in 1785, called "the sentiment of an invisible omniscience." Indeed, the power of this space is always in tension with the programmatic functionality of the spiralling gallery. It is this repressive centrality that evokes the feeling of anarchy and the brutal iconoclasm. And finally pleasure: according to the words of Frank Lloyd Wright, the rotunda was to be "a temple of spirit, a monument.” We believe that in the end, the void itself is the temple, a space omniscient in its exhilarating celebration of the ephemeral pleasure of beauty."
