Junkspace + (ART)chitecture

April 02, 2021

Junkspace + (ART)chitecture

I've mentioned before that lines and linework play a large part in my artmaking for this body of work. Even outside of this project I've had a love affair with linework and the complexities that come from jumbling up those lines. When I do drawing over drawing over drawing, the actual house can get lost in a smorgasbord of lines. The drawing is a clear representation of an image turned into an art object, as I favour the aesthetic of repeated lines and imagery over any sort of accurate representation. The jumble of lines also pays a slight homage visually to actual maps and even resembles traditional mapping conceptually, wherein a bunch of lines and information come together to outline human inhabitation. There is something about the overlapping of images and lines that has struck a chord with me, perhaps due to the amount of information that can be packed into a single field of view and what that layering can mean conceptually. These are a few of my favourite artists and works that showcase line in their art:

Jenny Saville, Reproduction drawing IV (after the Leonardo cartoon), 2010, pencil on paper

Julie Mehretu, Berliner Platze, 2008-2009, ink and acrylic on canvas

Henriette Valium, Original comic strip Hand red color p. 13/14, 2004, ink on paper

Line is the fundamental method of mark-making. Some of the earliest examples of representational art, like cave art for example, are pictures and symbols constructed by lines. Architecture lends itself perfectly to linework art, as its three dimensional form is a collection of mathematical lines. When translating ideas or images onto a page, our organic, fully formed world becomes transcribed into lines. Text, regardless of language, is also made up of lines. It's a pretty beautiful thing.

But there is something about the density of overlapping and repeated lines that creates such a beautiful image. The maximalist, visual chaos of these kinds of images have a feel of modern life to them, a modern world that is buzzing with information, traffic, noise, advertisements, and buildings upon buildings upon buildings to shelter our population of billions.

This chaos of lines, and thus the chaos of architecture and the modern world itself, is what is poetically discussed in architect Rem Koolhaas' Junkspace. His essay ultimately critiques our contemporary method of urban building. He argues we are essentially post-architecture (He states: "It was a mistake to invent modern architecture for the 20th century. Architecture disappeared in the 20th century.") and what is now being built is too commercial, too mass produced, and as a result modern architecture is merely a commodified afterthought. It is the junk that fills up our space.

Koolhaas goes on to define Junkspace with a series of musings and metaphors that ultimately point out how true interactions with space have been left at the wayside only to be replaced with flashy buildings and experiences that ultimately lack substance.

So what does this mean for my own project, one that encompasses space and architecture? In many ways my work aligns with Koolhaas' critiques, considering the fact almost all of the buildings I have drawn from are from previous generations and are often centuries old. I aim to look at our architecture, space, and surroundings in a perspective that celebrates it's beauty and appreciates the space it takes up. Koolhaas writes as though the art has been lost in architecture. Does that mean "good" architecture can then only exist in art?

An example I think of are site-specific works that intentionally consider space in its construction. The art and the space are manipulated to create an experience.

Heather Hart's Northern Oracle rooftops come to mind, as it engages with space while overtly referencing architecture and is an architectural structure in itself.

https://canadianart.ca/agenda/heather-hart-northern-oracle/

Art, particularly site-specific art, forces the viewer into a highly curated and considered space (considering our post-covid life where galleries could be visited). That same spatial awareness isn't considered in modern building practices, according to Koolhaas. Instead, space is considered by what is cheapest to make that will make the billionaires the most money. And thus, the end of architecture.

To loose architecture would mean the loss of culture and spatial experience. To live in Junkspace is to live in space whose beauty and potential are rejected for commodification. Koolhaus states: "Junkspace is post-existential; it makes you uncertain where you are, obscures where you go, undoes where you were." If our space has lost meaning, what does that mean for our own human purpose? And most importantly, can we get that purpose back?

I am just hoping that maybe, through art, we can, even if it's just with a couple of lines.