The New SUPERFRONT(ier)
Tucked away in the heart of Bed-Stuy, under the tracks of the LIRR, is an unlikely collision of architecture, performance art and experimental expression. SUPERFRONT is taking its patrons to new places and opening minds to see architecture, art and the world in a new way.
In January of 2008, Mitch McEwen opened SUPERFRONT, a gallery space that brings everything that’s experimental, innovative and artistic about architecture together under one roof. Since its opening, SUPERFRONT has never failed to convey the experiment, philosophic and theoretical sides of not only architecture and design but, art as well.
SUPERFRONT is modeled after the art collectives and artist residents that inhabit almost every major city from LA to New York to London to Berlin.
“I wanted to learn from these art models and create something like this for architects to experiment and mix with other disciplines. ... I figured if artists could pull something like that, why couldn’t architects do it?“ says McEwen, the Founder and Director, who practices architectural and urban design predominately at Bernard Tschumi Architects.
McEwen began brainstorming while studying for her M. Arch at Columbia University, “At the end of grad school I started talking with an art historian friend about curating an exhibit that would mix up installation artists and architects. We selected people on paper, wrote up a proposal outline, and then realized we didn’t know where we could exhibit it. That was in 2006.“ After shopping around, McEwen settled for a fixer-upper space on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. “I convinced the landlords to rent the storefront to me for half price, in exchange for me fixing it up and renovating it myself,“ she said.
Right out the gate, SUPERFRONT was already pushing boundaries with its group show “SOMETHING ABOUT ROOMS AND WALLS,“ which challenges relations between and the necessity of rooms and walls. The exhibition featured the work of architects and artists from Madrid, London, LA and even work form McEwen herself. Throughout future exhibits, SUPERFRONT invited Architects-in-Residence, and presented a series pairing architects with performance artists, called The Archeography Project Series, which was curated by McEwen.
Past exhibits’ progressive and innovative take on contemporary architecture has allowed SUPERFRONT to expand to a new frontier: West Hollywood. SUPERFRONT Los Angeles opened, in a 3,000 square foot space, on September 18th, 2009 at the Pacific Design Center, “This amazing art director named Helen Varola invited us to join a program called ‘Design Loves Art,‘ which is offering empty showrooms to select galleries. SUPERFRONT made the cut.“
SUPERFRONT LA opened with “Perry Hall: Painting Time, and Material Intelligence,“ Hall is an experimental multi-media artist whose groundbreaking works combine paint and sound in a form that is described by Hall as “sound drawing.“ The exhibit, which should immediately establish SUPERFRONT LA as a forward-thinking gallery, runs through December 18th and will include a panel of architecture and media theorists from the Los Angeles area on October 29th.
Following the Perry Hall exhibit, future exhibits are planned to be very architecture/urban planing oriented. “The next exhibit in LA, called “Unplanned,“ will deal with emergent urbanism and alternative models for urban planning - or what happens when you don’t plan cities at all,“ said McEwen. “Unplanned” promises to hit home in more ways than one, with urban planning being on President Obama’s administration agenda and the issues that we’ve encountered as a country in metropolitan areas.
SUPERFRONT BK is currently closed through October 11th for the installation of “The Laundromat Project: Create Change” exhibit, which will open October 17th, featuring works by Carlos Martinez, Michael Primo and Tracee Worley. The future looks bright for both locations in 2010 as SUPERFRONT brings up-and-coming architects to the forefront.
“We have the Architects-in-Residence show in Brooklyn in January, and then we are focused on community development themes and young New York-based architects. ... We’re developing a program called Cypher on Urban Affairs that will test out some new methods of community development and public space making. Look for the Cypher on Urban Affairs in Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights this spring.“
