Gallery Exhibition for a Computer Artist
From very early on in her art career, Vera Molnar used the computer as a quick and efficient tool to serve her imagination and help develop her ideas. This practice has brought her to injecting 1% disorder into a system, so as to produce a displacement emphasizing contradictions and strength in her work: “art is a flaw in the system”, she often recalls.
Machine Imaginaire is the imaginary machine Molnar becomes when she uses programming logic to create.
Square by square, the machine iterates, permeates, draws.
An Architectural Space
The Renaissance Society is a gallery located at the University of Chicago. The space is highly symmetrical with and takes advantage of the architectural structure of the building’s tall ceilings and immense angular walls. Due to it being on the top floor the main entrance is located just after a bank of elevators. The space consists of two rooms connected by a lengthy hallway. The main room has 8ft interior walls installed to create more space for artwork as well as give the visitors multiple choices for navigating the space to remove linearity.
The gallery was not only selected for the design of the space, but also the proximity to collect students on a campus famous for integrating art and technology.
The exhibition space has been modified to include extra walls standing on the interior of the hall with a large entrance structure outside of the hallway.
Gallery Entrance
The entrance for the exhibition works as a giant billboard for the gallery. Upon exiting the elevators, the visitor is struck by a complex overlay of interconnected lines from Molnar’s work and her name in human-sized letter forms.
The space invites people into the hallway with the letters, graphics, and colors wrapping around the edges toward the doorway. The hallway door and it’s windows will be unobstructed in order to give onlookers a small taste of the main gallery space before they see the main collection.
Artist Wall
The artist wall is positioned in a more central part of the exhibition rather than at the entrance in order to let people form their own opinions about the artwork before discovering more about it from the artist.
The wall echoes the colors and styling of the entrance, but is more interactive. Besides having an artist statement and an explanation of the collection, visitors can add to the design of the space. Connected to a string installation by Molnar is an empty space with a 5 by 5 grid and a bundle of string that allows the visitors to link the nails in the wall with string and create their own work in the style of Molnar.
Cross Walks
On the corner of Ellis and 59th Street, which is near Cobb Hall, an installation of trapezoids based off Molnar’s 144 Trapèzes from 1974. The trapezoids replace the traditional cross walk stripes. The space now acts as a directional guide for pedestrians and draws interest in the gallery exhibition. Since the installation continues onto the sidewalk, it draws further attention as something out of place in an otherwise normal space.
Exterior Banners
The banners are located around campus mounted on existing light poles. The banners work as a set and feature works from Molnar’s Structures de Quadrilateres. Each banner is color matched to each drawing, giving the banner the appearance of a continuous image. The image series works particularly well due to the natural progression from busy to simple, which provides enough of a backdrop for dropped out text as well as having space for a color overlay.
The banners also show the date range of the exhibition as well as a bit of gallery branding to help people find out about the location of the space.
