YONA FRIEDMAN
ICONOSTASIS MUSEUM
curated by Lorenzo Benedetti
De Vleeshal
Markt - Middelburg
14/9/2012 - 28/10/2012
The architect, theorist and author Yona Friedman (b. 1923 in Budapest) is one of this and the previous century’s leading thinkers on the history of architecture. At a time when urban planning, mobility, globalisation and migration were increasingly prominent issues, he developed such visionary concepts as ‘mobile architecture’, ‘The Spatial City’, ‘feasible utopias’ and ‘self-planning’ – all of them still very topical. For some years now he has been working with the photographer and filmmaker Jean-Baptiste Decavèle (b. 1961 in Grenoble), who studies representations of memory.
The guiding principle of Architecture without building is ‘start with the content’. There is a need to ‘be able to show something’, and this in turn requires a space, an architecture. Architecture without building sets out to ‘be at the service of something else’, without adapting to De Vleeshal. Spaces and art exhibits both have their limitations, and Architecture without building seeks to bridge the gap between them.
Iconostasis museum
Friedman’s design for De Vleeshal is a three-dimensional module consisting of 500 rings, a spatial structure in which works of art can be displayed. He calls this an ‘iconostasis museum’. The architectural features of the Iconostasis are not permanent, but can be used in various ways for various purposes, and removed, shifted, altered or renewed at any time.
Part of the Iconostasis will be located outside De Vleeshal, in the courtyard next to the town hall, thus forming an extension of De Vleeshal’s exhibition space. The content will not have to adapt to the space – at least not immediately. After the exhibition the Iconostasis will become part of the collection, and can be used as an additional space for exhibitions, meetings, presentations and other projects.
Yona Friedman’s architectural projects have often revolved around the notion of ‘the museum’. In the late 1960s, for instance, he produced a design for the Pompidou Centre based on a structure that would change over time. His relationship with the exhibition and the public is extremely important to him, which is why his project also focuses on the public as an element that helps shape ‘the museum’, De Vleeshal.
Yona Friedman (b. 1923 in Budapest) has had his work exhibited at many leading international art venues (the Lyon Biennale, the Yokohama Triennale and the FIAC in Paris in 2011, the Venice Biennale in 2009 and 2003, The Drawing Center in New York in 2007 and Documenta in Kassel in 2002). He is a unique figure who ignores the boundaries between disciplines. Friedman has written and provided drawings for more than fifty books on his research into architecture, ecology and language. In the past ten years, France’s Centre national de l’Edition et de l’Art imprimé (CNEAI) has built up a close and fruitful relationship with him, resulting in a number of exhibitions: Dare to make your exhibition (2007, Chatou), Gribouillis, models scale 1/1 (2007, Chatou), Tu ferais ta ville (2008, with the CNEAI and Arc en rêve / CAPC, Bordeaux) and Yona Friedman, Improvisations: films d’animation (1960-1963) et oeuvres sans planification (improvisations: animated films and unplanned works, 2009, in partnership with the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris and the CNEAI).
