Luftwerk: Parallel Perspectives
Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst, IL
May 11th – August 25th, 2019
Luftwerk: Parallel Perspectives is a site-specific exhibition that uses color and light interventions to activate and interpret the McCormick House, designed by Mies van der Rohe. The installation by Luftwerk—the Chicago-based artistic collaborative of Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero—heightens the senses and alters perception while celebrating the use of geometry in the Mid-century prefab prototype. Color is central to the visual transformation of the home’s architectural nuances, and largely inspired by an idea of the original developers Robert Hall McCormick and Herbert S. Greenwald, who offered to tint windows of their proposed prefab housing “almost any shade of the rainbow.” Parallel Perspectives is part of Bauhaus100, the global anniversary celebrations of the legendary German art school. It continues the artists’ year-long exploration of architecture by Mies, which began with the Barcelona Pavilion and will end with the Farnsworth House. More on the exhibition here.