Dancing architectural models channel "West Side Story" as a group of artists pay homage to the architect in an unusual exhibition.

By Janelle Zara

Photo © Hervé Hôte Gunpowder-equipped mobiles by artist Cai Guo-Qiang illuminate models of Frank Gehry's work in Solaris Chronicles, an exhibition at the future site of LUMA Arles.

In 2018, Frank Gehry’s 180-foot-tall Arts Resource Center, with towering swaths of pixelated-looking steel, is set to open on a 20-acre former train repair site in the South of France. It will be the centerpiece of LUMA Arles, an art and culture campus founded by Swiss collector Maja Hoffmann that is slowly taking shape on the site. But before the residents of Arles welcome the tower to their existing landscape of ancient Roman and Gothic architecture, they can now get an unusual introduction to its designer.

Inside the site’s Atelier de la Mécanique, a 43,000-square-foot garage that Selldorf Architects will eventually transform into galleries, a multi-part primer on Gehry’s work opened to the public on April 5 to coincide with the new building's groundbreaking. A second installment went up earlier this month, and both components will remain on view through October 26. The show, titled Solaris Chronicles, follows few norms of an architecture exhibition. Curated by artists Philippe Parreno and Liam Gillick, with help from Serpentine Gallery co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist, the show taps a star line-up of artists to present homages to Gehry’s oeuvre as well as complementary works of their own. It puts a spin on standard presentations of architecture with an exhibition that is—in every sense of the word—dynamic. The models, for one thing, dance....Continue Reading

> via Architectural Record