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It is not often that architects are also effective installation artists. The major complaint that one could make with Contemporary Architecture is with the absolutist philosophy that the building is the art so there is no need for any other visual ideas to detract from the purity of the form. Into this miasma step the architects Daniel Mihalyo and Annie Han, who prove that art and architecture are not mutually exclusive. This artistic duo show us every day things in extra ordinary ways. The proof is in the installation Minus Space opened August 19, at the Henry Art Gallery on the University of Washington Campus in Seattle. This exhibition is one that you must see if you are at all serious about Contemporary Art.
 Daniel Mihalyo and Annie Han (Lead Pencil Studio) explore the relationships between architectural space and land use. I wrote about their installation Linear Plenum at Suyama Space in March of 2004. In Minus Space, Lead Pencil examines the physical history of the exhibition’s site within the Henry Art Gallery. As part of the University of Washington campus, the Henry has been a small puzzle piece of several succeeding master plans drawn up for the campus, none of them completely executed.
Charles Gwathmey’s design for the 1997 expansion of the Henry sought to reconcile several existing master plan alignments. He maintained pedestrian corridors and views by using the device of sinking the new galleries 25 feet down into an existing hillside. Minus Space recreates the lines of the original hill with a semi-opaque membrane assembled from construction materials that will include jute/burlap on formed chicken wire with survey whiskers as tufts of grass. All the materials seem to come from Home Depot. The sloped plane of the rediscovered hill spans the East Gallery and extends into the exterior courtyard, permitting viewers to experience the installation from a variety of vantage points
The exhibition includes a mini-survey of Lead Pencil Studio’s additional creative architectural projects, photographic series, and installation works, providing the first examination of their creative work within and between aesthetic categories. Also featured are photographs by Mihalyo from Wood Burners, a survey of structures once used to get rid of saw dust in the logging process and banned by the Clean Air Act from the 1970's, which was published by Princeton Architectural Press and honored with the Betty Bowen Memorial Award. Of particular note are the sketches from the studio’s inventive architecture.
Lead Pencil Studio has been awarded a Creative Capital Foundation visual arts grant from New York and an Artist Trust Gap Grant for site specific installation, Maryhill Double. They also have been given a 4Culture: Special Projects Grant supporting a site specific installation, Retail/ Commercial. They have worked on the Seattle Monorail Project temporary building installation, Horizontal and contributed to a group show at the Schneider Museum of Art in Ashland in fall 2005. their previous installation Linear Plenum has a catalogue to be published through Suyama Space in fall 2005, 32 pp color. They also are working on new house commissions in rural sites in Olympia and Long Beach, Washington.
Shake the summer sand out of your shoes and go see this installation by two of Seattle's brighter lights in the architectural and sculptural community. You will begin to see every day things in extra ordinary ways. At least you will never look at a concrete foundation in the same way again.
Minus Space runs through November 20, 2005
www.henryart.org
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