Exhibition

  • Soft Schindler
    AGENdA, Tanya Aguiniga, Pedro Alonso and Hugo Palmarola, Laurel Consuelo Broughton / WELCOMEPROJECTS, Design, Bitches, Sonja Gerdes, Bettina Hubby, Alice Lang, Leong Leong, Anna Puigjaner / MAIO, Otero-Pailos Studio, Bryony Roberts Studio, and others
    Artists
    Mimi Zeiger
    Curator
    MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, at the Schindler House, West Hollywood
    Oct 12, 2019 to Feb 16, 2020
  • GRANTEE
    MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, at the Schindler House
    GRANT YEAR
    2018

Pauline Schindler’s finished room, ca. 1970. Courtesy of Friends of the Schindler House / Schindler Family Collection

Soft Schindler is an exhibition at R. M. Schindler's Kings Road House that reevaluates assumptions of binary thinking embedded in the history of the house, art and architectural discourses, and within contemporary culture by bringing together architects, artists, designers, and historical artifacts. Participants include: AGENdA, Tanya Aguiniga, Pedro Alonso and Hugo Palmarola, Laurel Consuelo Broughton / WELCOMEPROJECTS, Design, Bitches, Sonja Gerdes, Bettina Hubby, Alice Lang, Leong Leong, Anna Puigjaner / MAIO, Bryony Roberts Studio, and others. Participant works challenge the architectural context via their use of "soft" materials—textiles, ceramics, color juxtaposition, and patterning—as the exhibition is inspired by a period when Pauline Schindler made alterations to the residence such as painting interiors salmon pink. These alterations, now erased, were non-conforming to modernist ideals. Soft Schindler demonstrates the incompleteness of binary ideas in architecture, sculpture, and design—femininity vs. masculinity, inside vs. outside, heavy vs. light, rational vs. emotional—framing such notions as old-fashioned in a zeitgeist of post-binary conversations.

Mimi Zeiger is a Los Angeles-based critic, editor, and curator. Her work is situated at the intersection architecture and media cultures. Currently, she is one of the curators of the US Pavilion for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. She has written for The New York Times, Domus, Architectural Review, Architect, where she is a contributing editor, and is an opinion columnist for Dezeen. Zeiger is the 2015 recipient of the Bradford Williams Medal for excellence in writing about landscape architecture. She has curated, contributed to, and collaborated on projects that have been shown at the Art Institute of Chicago, 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, New Museum, Storefront for Art and Architecture, and the Architectural Association. She cocurated Now, There: Scenes from the Post-Geographic City, which received the Bronze Dragon at the 2015 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, Shenzhen. She teaches in the Media Design Practices MFA program at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena.

Unique in its role as an historic site and exhibition space, the MAK Center develops local and international projects exploring the intersection of contemporary art and architecture. Acting as a "think tank" for current issues, the Center encourages exploration of practical or theoretical aspects in art and architecture by engaging the Center's places, spaces, and histories. Established in 1994, the Center is housed in the landmark R. M. Schindler House (1921-22) in West Hollywood. In addition, the Center maintains and occupies two other Schindler-designed buildings, the Mackey Apartments (1939) and the Fitzpatrick-Leland House (1936).