This exhibition, which coincides with the release of the Metabolism Trip book, Is a selection of images from Charlie Koolhaas’ photographs of the Metabolism movement, in an installation designed by Japanese architect Shohei Shigematsu in Tokyo’s innovative Koko Gallery. 

www.gallery-koko.com

Jan. 7th 15:00～ the Metabolism exhibition talk
Guest speaker: Charlie koolhaas, Shohei Shigematsu, Yoshikazu Nango (moderator)

Y.N: Why did you choose photography after your studies in Sociology, did you see it as an expression of your interest in sociology? 

C.K: When I studied Sociology at New York University, I was particularly interested in theorists like Georg Simmel, who observed how the modern metropolis, which united people from diverse social groups had created new kinds of social and psychological associations; how distance allowed new proximity. I particularly liked his concept of the ‘stranger’ as a person in society whose value stems from objectivity and lack of connections, stripping away inhibitions. In his view we can confess and open-up to a stranger, and the ‘stranger’ can exert new influences into an otherwise closed social network and can form a bridge to alternative realities; states of being. I see my life and my work as the role of a ‘stranger’ and I am interested in recording the lives of other ‘outsiders’. When I lived in China I started a magazine called ‘Unit’ that featured interviews with foreigners in China and Chinese immigrants in various other countries. These people, immigrants, traders, foreigners, are the mediators of social and cultural change. They are the creative force behind ‘Globalisation’ because they have the objectivity that Simmel called ‘freedom’.

Ultimately I realised that my real interests where not in defining or labeling certain social groups or categories, this felt too serious and static. For me the academic study of Sociology was never surreal or humorous enough, and it is the ridiculous details of social life, the absurd moments and silliness that allude to deeper dramas and conflicts, which I hope to capture in my work. My photography might be influenced by my social studies, but for me it is more about transitions, an almost anti-sociology in that it attempts to capture the dynamic nature of society rather than define our social lives.

In my travels I see cultural hybrids emerging resulting from the blending of identities and social norms. My photographs attempt to describe what is happening in cities like London, Guangzhou, Bombay or New York where new identities live and die in an accelerated space of time, gone before they could be properly defined. I felt that the immediate nature of photography, the capturing of moments out of context, suited the recording of these transient incongruities. I like the overused and abused word ‘lifestyle’, which alludes to something universal but superficial, it refers to the cosmetic and imminent version of our social lives. I hope to record the in-between steps of our changing societies.

Y.N: The Metabolist buildings and movement was very male, this is the first time that these buildings have been photographed by a woman and I think that this female insight is a very apparent in your photographs.

C.K: I wonder what it really is that makes my perspective female, if at all? Is it that I have no fear of the failures that are a part of life? What attracts me to buildings are their vulnerabilities. I photograph the cracks, the peeling apart of the building’s surfaces, the places that have been infected by mould and leaks. These are a building’s wounds that bring it alive. That’s what I can relate to. The leaking Nakagin Capsule Tower, for example, moved me because it seemed that this neglected building was crying. I find that pain and suffering is more a source of connection and understanding, than beauty and excellence, Might this be a female view?

When I approach a building or environment I search for the places in which the intentions of their planners have been thwarted by the chaos of human life. The ways in which the rebellious nature of people means that they will not obide by the high ideals that are forced upon them. We see this even in the most modernist structure, like in the Sakaide Artificial Ground, where the inhabitants have added lace curtains, mundane posters of pop stars, or as in the Yaminashi Broadcasting Center they decorated their stark concrete interiors with Toys of large furry ducks.

Architecture is a profession mostly populated by men. Architects strive to avoid failure again and again until an almost impossible triumph occurs – a design is realised. My favourite photograph from the Metabolism Trip series is the one of the woman sunbathing in the Nakagin Capsule Tower. She is relaxing amongst the puddles and mould stemming from leaks from the decaying building that creaks above her head. Its rusty infrastructure exposed, like she is in her bikini. But in this dangerous and appalling ‘nature’ she had found the perfect place for privacy and peace and when I saw her I thought ‘I would love to sunbathe here’. I doubt a man would have envied her in the same way.

S.S: Why can you sell these images as separate Art objects when you have made a book that places them into a narrative and then you add stories that give them context. When you take these out of context again to sell them as Art, how do you reconcile yourself with this commercialism? What do these photographs become as individuals?

C.K: I think that this ‘Metabolism Trip’ book is one narrative, it describes my adventure through the Metabolist architectures like an adventure film, I tried to add sensory information, to show the tension that I felt from the cinematic and dramatic nature of these incredible beasts. At times I was overwhelmed and consumed by the buildings.

As an exhibition ‘Metabolism Trip’ inserts you directly into these scenes and places. I believe that Art can bring you into a moment, place, idea without background and it forces you to sink or swim. Hopefully you will drown because there is no lifeboat that is ‘context’ and therefore you are compelled to consider and then to understand your own judgement. Art provides us with a self-conscious glimpse into our own reactions, it does this better than documentary, because with documentary you’re told what you are supposed to feel. I enjoy selling Art because I like collections (my mother is a collector of ‘failed’ art and objects), anyone buying one of these photographs is removing it from my story and putting it into another. The photograph then becomes part of a new narrative with an endless amount of unexpected associations defined by the collectors unique obsessions – it then enters a new collection or community and achieves a new identity, this sets it free from its original context once again.

Ultimately I see my work as being about hybrids and a hybrid itself, it is at once Documentary, Art, Sociology, Fiction, it is real and fake at the same time. I would like to try to wriggle out from under the weight of these heavy definitions because otherwise I face the same restrictions that I found when I studied sociology, that actually the really exciting moments have no labels yet.

Yoshikazu Nango (moderator), Charlie koolhaas, Shohei Shigematsu

This is a book of photographs and short stories of Charlie Koolhaas’s journey through many of the remaining buildings of the Metabolist Movement, the first non-western avant-garde, launched in Tokyo in 1960, in the midst of Japan’s postwar miracle.

Charlie travelled across Japan In 2009 to photograph how the projects invented by these idealistic thinkers had survived and aged, and how they were being inhabited today. What she found were triumphant and at times eerie constructions that had taken on a life of there own.

Charlie will be at the Koko Gallery in Tokyo, Japan for a book signing on January the 7th 2012 at 16.30 (www.gallery-koko.com)

This book brings together Charlie Koolhaas’ photographs of Dubai along with a research text on the city’s art and culture policies by Ahmad Makia. It is published by Brownbook UAE.

Evolving Spaces: Dubai’s emerging cultural districts, attempts to evoke the feel of Dubai and the way it adapts. Charlie’s photographs present an illustrative journey round and through the city by laying bare its many dispositions: as a business hub, an emerging cultural centre, the hidden alleyways, market stalls, confluence of nationalities and socioeconomic backgrounds.

The book was launched at the AIR Gallery as part of their Dubai Futures exhibition and talk series held between 18th and 21st July for Shubbak, a festival celebrating contemporary Arab culture held in London.

www.brownbook.ae

At the Downtown Pavilion in Dubai, Charlie Koolhaas presents Dubai Then, the follow-up to the Dubai Next exhibition (Vitra Museum, Germany, 2008). On display is the original Dubai Next installation (see Dubai Next post) for which Charlie had photographed the city’s intricacies, discordances and mixes to bring together the multiplicity of Dubai. Also exhibited in Dubai Then are new photographs of Dubai, creating an energetic amalgam from her glimpses of how the city grew into its boom and then coped with the economic crisis, the way it reinvents and evolves, re-asserts itself and lives with transition.

Dubai Then is a historical narrative. It shows Dubai as a city that had defined itself as centre for opulence, and must now reconcile its ambitions with the visual manifestations of recession; the emptiness of skyscrapers abandoned by companies gone bankrupt or building works on standstill. Charlie’s photographs bring to light the way different individuals assert themselves in such an environment, tensions and the spontaneous moments of harmony within the disorder. It tells a story of a city that seems to be defined by the diversity of its inhabitants, yet by observing the same space over time we witness the incredible social melding and drive of the city.

Combining the old and new photographs of Dubai in the Downtown Pavilion is an extension of this manifestation: the Downtown Pavilion was recently established as gallery spaces in premises that were the offices of developers who went bust. Old and new Dubai is to be found in the location and the exhibition itself.

REVIEWS

Art in the City

The National

Khaleej Times

Gulf News

INTERVIEWS

Art in the City

Gulf Today

Dubai Art Fair, 15-19 March 2011

With the Lucy Mackintosh Gallery, Charlie presented a diptych of photographs of Guangzhou and Dubai and a window installation on Dubai. The window installation sought to enhance the details and her glimpses of Dubai: the viewer could return to the city and its diversity just by contemplating the small and larger scale photographs.

As a commissioned photographer, Charlie undertook an artistic-anthropological venture into the entrails of the fair – embracing its diversity, its celebration of the increasing assertiveness of art and culture in Dubai, the logistics and set-up, the collectors, expats and children, the established and the emerging. The images were then displayed on a screen at the entrance of the fair and on the fair’s website.

The fair itself was in strange balance, occurring at a time when the world was holding its breath as the nuclear catastrophe in Japan threatened and the Arab uprisings demanded supersonic adaptability yet calm reflection. Dubai felt like an island among the rough seas of change, yet there was a surprisingly adult response to it, reflecting integrity and the will to support art as a means of coming to terms with unfathomable issues. This setting, coupled with the innate quality and drive of the fair, created an interesting medium in which to roam and photograph.

To watch full slide show on YOUTUBE click here

True Cities book launched this autumn, published by Lars Muller Publications, Zurich.

The January 2011 True Cities exhibition at the Architectural Association, London, was a photographic and text installation, a collage from a vast collection of images and words that have been collected from around the world and the three-dimensional preview of the upcoming True Cities publication.

The True Cities book is a photographic publication, a portrait of five global cities: Dubai, Guangzhou, Houston, Lagos and London, viewed through Charlie Koolhaas’ own sociologically-guided perception of what is a true representation of today’s global cities. Multi-faceted and complexly layered, these insights and images have been gathered during Charlie’s time spent living and working within the cities’ different ideologies, cultures and economies. True Cities is a summary of ten years’ research into global cities, a collage created from a vast collection of images and words that seek to intimate the soul of the city.

It is a comparison of different historical centres of finance. London (East London in particular); Guangzhou, China, (formerly Canton), one of the oldest trading centres of the world and China’s (and the world’s) production hub today; and also Houston, Texas, the financial and political stronghold of the oil-producing American-right, are old bastions of trade and innovation. Comparing these to future-oriented cities like Lagos and Dubai, which are inventing new political ideologies, markets and global cultural trends due to the shifts in global power, leads to arresting visual and media manifestations. The book describes the many lives and dimensions of these five places, to give a true representation of cities as global centres of cross-cultural inhabitation and exchange, places for collaboration across fields and specialism, beliefs and cultures.

Fragments from an extensive archive of interviews, quotes and anecdotes are brought together, giving humorous and honest insights into the complex and sometimes conflicting demands and aspirations of those living in today’s cities. Using phrases from lifestyle magazines gathered in each city, the aspirations, ideals, idylls and impossible wishes are all juxtaposed with the realities people conform with. Charlie can be said to take ‘psychic readings’ of the urban environment, the text in the book communicates like a broadcast from the cities’ antennae.

True Cities is essentially an abstract form of storytelling, letting visual elements become words, the cities becoming a series of sentences. A photographic patchwork of urban life, the surfaces of the urban environment, its architecture, its media and the voices of the people who populate theses five cities are used to tell five parallel but intersecting stories. They contain many moments that are individually unique, interesting or beautiful, but when brought together these create a multi-layered picture of an intricately connected world. True Cities is an attempt to make a rigorous yet creative research that will seek to expand the vocabulary with which the ‘life’ of architecture is described.

REVIEWS:

Domus Magazine

Although they have collaborated for many years, Mother and Daughter combined forces in an exhibition for the first time.

For Room for Thought, Madelon Vriesendorp & Charlie Koolhaas exhibited separate works with a collaborative piece joining the two exhibitions in the middle.

The fact that they are related means that one can see similar themes in their art – though they have chosen different tools and vocabularies with which to express themselves. Their aesthetics are derived from ‘celebrating everything you have no control over’, allowing random connections, accidental absurdities, the boring, the ugly and the mundane to inform their work and to point out its fragile or robust beauty.

Madelon exhibited all of her new works (since her show at the Architecture Association, London) as well as a selection of her earlier paintings. Her new work included her “Toy Paintings”, her “Life-Size Mind Game”, as well as her “Idol Tower” and “Chess Board” pieces. For her part, Charlie exhibited a series of five different windows to give the effect of standing in a living room and looking out onto five different global cities. Within a separated space is their collaborative work: a panopticon – a circular plywood structure with a series of rooms containing dramatic imaginary scenes, using both photographs and objects.

As a testament to their wonderment and curiosity at the new condition of our multi-cultural world, they have created a parallel universe for Room for Thought, where good taste, formal ideals and the notion of perfection have become obsolete, where all ideologies and disciplines are embraced and placed side by side, co-existing without conflict, where each scene tells its own story, un-judged and rejoiced.

Click here for a slideshow of the opening at the Lucy Mackintosh Gallery and here for more images of the exhibition and press clippings.

REVIEWS

Domus Magazine

Abitare Magazine

The exhibition included excerpts of a chapter from Charlie Koolhaas’ little book “Killer Mould: A Graphic Nightmare about Guangzhou” and images from Guangzhou Urban Villages were exhibited in the form of wallpaper and lightboxes. TILT: Black & White was a group show supported by A-Frame at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA, London).

An Artological study of two distant yet inter-related places, compared and contrasted with a focus on cultural co-incidences, parallel influences and emerging harmony.

For this exhibition, Charlie Koolhaas exhibited a series of 150 photographs of Lagos, Nigeria, and Dubai, UAE, on a light box. On the left hand side are images of Lagos; on the right are images of Dubai. These combinations show contrasts – for example in wealth and lifestyle – and also connections and similarities – in forms and cultural influences. Individually these images show details but when paired together they should point to a larger system and demonstrate the relatedness of the entire world.

REVIEWS:

Shanghaichase.blogspot.com

A collaboration with artist Angelbert Metoyer to create a mixed media record of the world that samples global conditions from places such as China, Dubai, Nigeria, US and Europe, using a wide range of mediums including painting, drawing, photography, sound, film, smell and assemblage.

REVIEWS:

Jerry Cullum – More Notes Towards an Essay That May Never Be Written
BURNAWAY