Gijón Exhibitions, Spain - PR Mar 07:

LEESER ARCHITECTURE DESIGNS INAUGURAL NEW MEDIA EXHIBITIONS FOR
LABORAL, A NEW ART AND INDUSTRIAL CREATION CENTER IN SPAIN

Gijón, Spain—New York City-based Leeser Architecture has designed two exhibitions, Feedback and Gameworld, that will inaugurate the new LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Center on March 30, 2007. Feedback is a retrospective of electronic and new media art curated by Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and Jemima Rellie, Head of Digital Programmes at the Tate Modern, London. Gameworld, curated by Carl Goodman, Deputy Director and Director of Digital Media at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City, explores the videogame as an art form. Leeser Architecture worked in close collaboration with the respective curators in creating both exhibition designs.



Feedback: Mar 30 – Jun 30, 2007

Leeser Architecture’s concept for the exhibition design for Feedback was to create a map—a geography of new media art inscribed within the volume of LABoral. The map is the new space of the gallery, created through the creasing, scoring, cutting, turning, enfolding and unfolding of a single surface, with the artworks mapped onto and, in some cases into, the thin skin. The map is designed to encourage the visitor to explore the gallery environment in a participatory manner and to suggest established and emergent relationships between each individual artwork in the exhibition.

Feedback focuses on art that is responsive to instructions, input or its environment, and creates one possible narrative of the history of new media art. Featuring historical and current artworks that are all based on technology and systems of response, the exhibition traces the evolution of contemporary artistic practice involving digital technologies and will include works by Marcel Duchamp, Sol Lewitt, László Maholy-Nagy, Manfred Mohr and Vera Molnar, among others.



Gameworld: Mar 30 – Sep 30, 2007

A real environment modeled after the virtual realm, Leeser Architecture’s exhibition design for Gameworld allows for multiple visitor routes through the gallery, creating fluid boundaries between different sections of the exhibition. Cast in digital blue, the
design is prefabricated to fit into the unique and specific interior parameters of LABoral’s exhibition spaces. Its flexible system can be modified over time when the contents of the exhibition change or grow, and modules of an alternate color can be inserted to replace the original blue armature. Gameworld features a selection of
historical games recognized for their design innovation, alternative and experimental games that explore the possibilities of the medium and artworks that demonstrate videogames’ impact on modern life.

Gijon Exhibition : Leeser Architecture

About Leeser Architecture

For nearly two decades, Thomas Leeser, Principal of Leeser Architecture, has been widely recognized for incorporating emerging technologies into his architectural practice. Leeser Architecture uses technology to reframe common understanding about architectural conventions and production, creating powerful environments in the process. These environments are characterized by complex and richly varied spatial experiences, new programmatic relationships and beautifully simple organizations. Institutional projects, museums and performing arts centers are an area of particular interest and expertise to Leeser Architecture. The firm has been invited to participate in prestigious events such as the 2004 Venice Architecture Biennale and competitions for a new media museum for Eyebeam Atelier in New York City and the Nam June Paik Museum in Seoul, Korea. Leeser Architecture recently completed the 3-Legged Dog Center for Art and Technology in New York City—a new media and
performing arts center, and the first cultural institution to rebuild in Lower Manhattan after September 11th. In 2009, the firm’s first major built work in New York City, the addition to the Museum of the Moving Image, will open in Queens.

About LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Center

LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Center is, first and foremost, a space for artistic exchange. It was set up with the purpose of establishing an effective alliance between art, design, culture, industry and economic progress, and the goal of becoming a space for interaction and dialogue between art and industrial creation. As an art center, LABoral is fully committed to the development of programs that allow artists to explore expressive concepts and experiment with the creative activities made possible by modern information and technology. The center is located at the Universidad Laboral of Gijón, a striking architectural complex built in the 1950s to provide vocational training to disadvantaged children. To create LABoral, the Government of the Principality of Asturias refurbished 12,400 square feet of old workshops originally designed for vocational training. This unprecedented initiative has been conceived as an intellectual, cultural and regenerative element of the economic structure of the Asturias region.

LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Center

Universidad Laboral S/N, 33394 Gijón – Spain
www.laboralcentrodearte.org
T. +34 985 18 55 77 F. +34 985 33 73 55

Leeser Architecture : Gijón Exhibitions, Spain - info from Susan Grant Lewin Associates 160307



Spanish building : Hotel Puerta America

Bilbao Architecture

Spanish Architects

Barcelona Buildings



World Architecture : e-architect - a guide to key buildings across the globe

Spanish architecture exhibition: Montevideo Biennial

Buildings / photos for the Gijón Architecture page welcome: info@e-architect.co.uk

LABoral, Gijón, Spain: page - adrian welch / isabelle lomholt