Chilean art and architecture studio Pezo von Ellrichshausen’s “Finite Format” exhibition is currently on display at one of the most important cultural sites in the Czech Republic: The House of Art of Ceske Budějovice. Composed of more than 480 paintings (Finite Format) and six ink drawings (Infinite Motive), the installation aims to demonstrate the firm’s “underlying method to understand not only the artistic qualities in a work of architecture but also the architectonic attributes of a work of art,” according to the architects.
In parallel, Pezo von Ellrichshausen also carried out a workshop with 14 architecture students from the Technical University of Liberec to conceptualize and construct a twelve-square-meter scale model for the "Infinite Motive" installation. Using the circle as the basic element, the architects reflect on how “architectonic intentions may be diluted by means of the repetition of a single figure with a diverse range of dimensions.”
Project: Finite Format
Format: 486 pinturas, oil on canvas 30 x 30 cm (each)
Overall Size: 270 x 1620 cm
Year: 2014-2015
Description from the architect: Finite Format 002 and 003 collects two works produced by Pezo von Ellrichshausen, each one of them composed by a series of two hundred and forty three paintings. The series are the result of a precise study on proportion and formal character. These works are presented in a linear sequence that simultaneously erodes and reinforces the individuality of every basic figure. The logical system that defines these architectonic objects can be read as an apparent contradiction since the same set of mechanical rules distorts a single structure, indifferent to its particular landscape or portrait orientation.
Project: Infinite Motive
Format: 6 drawings, ink on paper, 70 x 110 cm (each)
Overall Size: 140 x 220 cm
Model: Scale model, painted mdf, 300 x 400 cm
Year: 2015
Description from the architect: Infinite Motive is a selection of hand drawings on paper and a single scale model (built in collaboration with students of the Faculty of Art and Architecture at the Technical University of Liberec). This is an open research on the capacity of architectonic intentions to be diluted by means of the repetition of a single figure with a diverse range of dimensions. The inner consistency of the complex resulting system, in its rather accidental nature and beyond context, programme or construction, becomes an inquiry of the very notion of a self-regulated plan.
The "Finite Format" exhibition is open to the public until November 23, 2015, while the exhibition catalogue can be purchased here.
