BODYBUILDINGS

One of the first shows commissioned for the Storefront for Art and Architecture in its new home at the corner of Kenmare and Centre Streets in downtown Manhattan, Bodybuildings: Architectural Facts and Fictions is a five-year retrospective featuring site-specific works, formatted into two-dimensional representation wedged into the awkwardly shaped acute triangle of the gallery.

As visitors enter the space, they are confronted with a mediated image: the screen of a television, suspended in a steel apparatus, and reflected on a mirror positioned at a forty-five-degree angle.

In an inversion of the typical architectural process, the ten photo-drawings hanging on the gallery walls were produced after the projects were completed rather than in advance. The drawings were made in the oversize white borders of the photographs; every photograph is graphically reconstructed as a perspective drawing with orthogonal projections emanating from the central image. In each photo-drawing, information is revealed, but it is also willfully disturbed or concealed. In some cases, details were changed to reflect what could have been done with supplemental funds. Accompanying each drawing is a backlit apparatus holding 35mm slides that provide additional clues, inviting observers to examine each work with a magnifying lens, like detectives. Also on display are costumes, architectural models, and artifacts from prior installations.