Architecture: Shannon Bool 1:1
Shannon Bool. Bombshell 4, 2018. Photogram on fibre paper. 18 x 28 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Daniel Faria Gallery.
Written and Photo Edited by Wenjie (Demi) Zhao
Shannon Bool's solo exhibition 1:1 at the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago (MoCP) is a mesmerizing exploration of the intersection between art history and modern architecture. The exhibition showcases Bool’s diverse artistic practice, including photograms and tapestries, which marry contemporary architecture and fine art with traditional craft and decorative methods. On view until April 2, 2023, the exhibition features an intriguing collision and reaction between Orientalism and Modernism, Freudian psychoanalysis and the use of artifacts, the female body and architectural plans, creating a strange and wondrous experience for viewers. Bool’s work actively engages with art history while referencing related disciplines such as architecture and psychology to challenge conventional ways of seeing.
In the photogram artwork “Bombshell 4,” created in 2018, Shannon Bool takes inspiration from two sources - the reclining female figure in Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres' iconic Orientalist oil painting “La Grande Odalisque” from 1814, and the erotic drawings of Le Corbusier, a Swiss-French architect and leading figure in Modernist architecture. By overlaying Le Corbusier’s plans for the capital city of Algiers onto Orientalist postcards featuring women as exotic sex objects, Bool creates a seemingly contradictory and forced juxtaposition of Orientalism and Modernism. Yet, this eclectic mix of styles coexists in a powerful and visually creative manner, probing into the contentious issue of objectifying the sensuous female body.
Shannon Bool. The Weather, 2019. Jacquard tapestry. 250 x 347 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Daniel Faria Gallery.
In another work, Shannon Bool's large-scale jacquard tapestry installation, "The Weather," presents a unique perspective of the interior of the Farnsworth House, a masterpiece of modern architecture designed by Mies van der Rohe. This tapestry work is an intricate marvel, made possible by using a mechanical weaving device called the jacquard loom, which creates complex and highly detailed designs in the fabric. Embroidered with ornamentation featuring spring-like floral patterns, this tapestry disrupts the view from the inside of the house and hints at the dissociative effects of modernism's extensive use of glass and steel.
Shannon Bool continues to explore the theme of dissociation and the behavior of architecture in her collage and photogram works. In her series “Horses of Oblivion,” the artist juxtaposes images of modernist architecture with the energetic form of horses in stride. Inspired by Carlo Mollino’s photomontage of a horse running past the façade of the Equestrian Club of Turin, Bool synthesized Mollino’s surrealist treatment of the body and the relationship between movement and space into her own work. In the “Horses of Oblivion 1”, she collages “Lloyd’s of London Building,” devised by Richard Rogers in 1984, onto the body of horses, symbolizing the dynamism, high-tech architectural aesthetic, and progress modernism aimed to evoke.
Shannon Bool. Horse of Oblivion 1, 2019. Photogram. 91.4 x 72.4 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Daniel Faria Gallery.
Shannon Bool. Horse of Oblivion 8, 2019. Photogram. 34.9 x 43.2 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Daniel Faria Gallery.
Through the outward gaze in “Bombshell 4,” the interior view in “The Weather,” and the leaping “Horse of Oblivion,” Shannon Bool creates a multi-disciplinary investigation of modernist architecture in 1:1. By depicting the grainy depth of a woman’s thoughts and feelings, as well as intersection between nature and the built environment, Bool seeks to challenge gendered tropes and prompt a critical examination of how art and architecture have traditionally been gendered and how they have influenced our perceptions of space and the human body. In an architectural world constructed by photograms and tapestries, Bool leads the viewers to explore the cultivated beauty, pampered isolation, and societal change with harbingers of modernist architecture.
To view more on this exhibition, visit MoCP’s website.
