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Artists: Doug Garofalo, Catherine Ingraham, Mark Linder, Greg Lynn, Eva Maddox, Stephen Perrella, Mark Rakatansky, Robert Somol, Maria Whiteman, and Lily Zand

Architexturally Speaking, curated by Stanley Tigerman, director of UIC ’s School of Architecture, provides an opportunity for Gallery 400 to showcase the work of ten UIC faculty members who create their works at the crossroads of architecture and language. The contributors include three assistant professors, six adjunct faculty, and one visiting critic; four women and six men; three who build now, five who might build later, and two who may never build; three PhDs, six Ivy League pedigrees; two who edit, six who write; and none from Chicago. Despite their disparate backgrounds, however, all ten are obsessed with the conjunction between writing and architecture, all are committed teachers, all create work paradigmatic for students, all are near the top of his or her multivalent game(s). Collectively they represent the trajectory that UIC’s School of Architecture has taken. They were “the best of breed” of a new day dawning on architecture/architexture. In Architexturally Speaking, they are called upon to interact/interlace/intersect one with the other, and the other, and the other.

This is a time of collaboration—not competition. The spirited production—and teaching—of these ten young-to-middling talented women and men is crucial in a time delimited more by need then by desire. Realizing the mandate for an architectural Hippocratic oath, the ethical conduct of each and every one of these generously endowed souls causes a reconsideration of our otherwise myopic, and too often willful, behavior. This modest exhibition, for all its enthusiasms, tells us more about what we have to do to fulfill our obligations not to our discipline, certainly not to our profession, but to our humanity. The interaction/interface/intersection on display is inevitably a small-scale version of our larger need to interact/interface/intersect with each other individually as well as collectively.

Our culture maintains its uncertainty about the individual versus the collective, the value of ethnic/racial/religious/gender/diversity versus the benefits of “the melting pot.” There is a refreshing quality attached to that uncertainty. It is also naive. Our architects and teachers are all responsible for not only reflecting “the will of the epoch,” but also pointing to “a better way.” The generation that these ten represent understands the difficulties connected with the disparity of these challenges, but the exhibited artists do not see those challenges as mutually exclusive.

This gallery, then, is not only in the city, but it is also about the city. The nomadic squatters here now in this hall obligate themselves to confront/contend with each other, even as their initiative drives them to proceed along each and every career path. Their success and/or failure here is a metaphor, like it or not, of their ability to deal with mutual exclusivity rooted in the individual versus the collective. Their willingness to place themselves in such a dangerous situation is a testimony to their courage, and it will take courage to deal with our explosive society both as an architect and as a teacher. Such is the need for an architectural Hippocratic oath, without which we luxuriate in our self-removal from responsibility for contending with the disjunctions of our age.

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST

Doug Garofalo

Sitetable, 1992
Steel, wood, rubber, paint, cardboard, and paper

Catherine Ingraham

Pagemaker, 1992
Paper and glue

Mark Linder

On Writing Involving Architecture, 1988–92
Ink on mylar and text

Greg Lynn

Stranded Sears Tower, 1992
IRIS color prints, steel, rubber, clips, and Plexiglas

Eva Maddox

House of Ten, 1992
Computer-generated images, foamcore, and PVC pipe

Stephen Perrella

Whether Conditions: Institute for Electronic Clothing, 1992
IRIS computer prints

Mark Rakatansky

Context:, 1992
Mixed media

Robert Somol

Chance Affiliations, 1992
Mixed media

Maria Whiteman

Tales: Descriptive Memory for Installation, 1992
Screen and paint

Lily Zand

Witches & the Moon, 1992
Steel, canvas, and video

CURATOR BIOGRAPHY

A Chicago native and principal in the architectural and design firm of Tigerman McCurry, Stanley Tigerman (born 1930) has undertaken nearly 400 projects, resulting in more than 175 built works. Tigerman trained in some of Chicago ’s top firms from 1949 until 1959, including the office of Keck & Keck, Milton Schwartz, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Following his graduation from Yale University, where he received both a BArch (1960) and an MArch (1961) under the leadership of Paul Rudolph, Tigerman established his own firm, working with several partners, before founding Tigerman McCurry Architects in 1986 with his wife Margaret McCurry. Tigerman is the author of several books, including The Chicago Tribune Tower Competition and Late Entries (1980); Versus: An American Architect ’s Alternatives (1982); The California Condition: A Pregnant Architecture (1982); The Architecture of Exile (1988); and Stanley Tigerman: Buildings and Projects 1966–1989 (1989), and he has edited numerous others. In addition to being chosen as one of the architects to represent the United States at the 1976 and 1980 Venice Biennales, the work of Tigerman ’s firm has been exhibited in major galleries and art museums around the world, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In addition to his own work, Tigerman has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to advancing the discussion of architecture in Chicago for more than five decades. During this time he was a founding member of the critically engaged group the Chicago Seven, and he has been the director of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago since 1985.

PRINT COLLATERAL

Postcard: Architexturally Speaking

Architexturally Speaking

Curated by Stanley Tigerman
and postscript by Stephen Perrella
Gallery 400, School of Art and Design,
University of Illinois at Chicago, 1992
28 pp., 8.5 x 10 in., with black-and-white reproductions

This catalogue can be purchased by calling Gallery 400 at 312 996 6114.

EXHIBITION SUPPORT

Architextually Speaking is partially supported by the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Art and Design’s College of Architecture, Art, and Urban Planning.

This exhibition is also funded by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.