Exhibition Announcement: The Center Can Not Hold @ Granary Arts
Sparano + Mooney Architecture is a community of architects and craftspeople in the American West, celebrating 25 years of great design this year from our architecture offices in Salt Lake City, Utah and Los Angeles, California. In our explorations of architectural design, contemporary challenges such as environmental conditions, cultural contexts, and occupant experience are woven around a central concept and a conceptual construct, or what we term a sculptural “heuristic device”. These devices serve as a point of departure through which a core idea is developed and embodied. As stand-alone works of contemporary art, these devices are separate from – yet crucially informative to – the resulting architecture. This belief in a foundational essence of architecture is why we were honored to be included in the forthcoming exhibition at Granary Arts, titled “The Center Can Not Hold” (November 18, 2022 – January 20, 2023).
carto · graphic, by Sparano + Mooney Architecture, from “The Center Can Not Hold” exhibition at Granary Arts. Curated by Hikmet Sidney Loe
Curated by Hikmet Sidney Loe and featuring works created by Sparano + Mooney Architecture’s principals Anne Mooney, AIA, LEED AP, and John Sparano, FAIA, as well as regional architect Hannah Vaughn, AIA, LEED AP (principal at VY Architecture), the exhibition conceptualizes the temporal nature of a “center” through the lens of architecture. We were invited to consider ideas of place. Positioning the geographical center of Utah and the town of Ephraim as the practical center for creative work, the collective and collaborative result is not architecture to be built, but is contemporary art that acts as a catalyst to mine conceptual layers of engagement with the past, the present, and the future. The ephemerality of the present moment – who occupies place, what traces remain of their existence – leads to questions of past occupation: how place is mapped, as well as concepts of erasure, remembrance, and memory.
The Sparano + Mooney Architecture team constructed a full-scale oculus, offering fragmented view of maps, altered by layering graphics, natural materials, and hand-crafted, stitched elements to reimagine the idea of “center” over time. Our understanding of the term “center” embraces the invisible presence of suppressed voices and alternative ways of experiencing a landscape. In our consideration, the idea of a center is dynamic, evolutionary and transitory, and embodies an ethos of multiplicity rather than the implied singularity of the word. This interactive construct invites the visitor to explore the piece from a variety of perspectives – some direct, others requiring effort to access and assess the view.
Within a white conic shell, maps of central Utah are visible. These standardized, logical charts serve as the background for a critique of what this and other maps both portray and omit. The uniform graphics, colors and symbols act as a singular, commonly-accepted, means of reading the landscape and suggest a comprehensive documentation of place. However, this system of information prompts a questioning of what might be missing, ignored or erased.
We also present an aerial photograph of this regional center, as well as an overlay of another set of patterns, color fields and line work that helps us consider the possibility of the presence of unrecorded and invisible human settlement in this landscape – the presence of the “other”. These overlaid graphics challenge conventions of representation, but also the notion that the map is a full depiction of this geographical area. The resulting juxtaposition challenges the viewer to contemplate what – and who – else might have inhabited and experienced these spaces and landscapes. The layered logic of this work suggests the presence of others – those not visible (or excluded from) within the gridded settlements and in the agricultural fields.
The surrounding conic enclosure creates an abstract physical and visual barrier between the viewer and the maps. Two separate and distinct spaces are created, as the ideas of connection and separation are explored. A series of apertures of different shapes and sizes is the observer’s means of visual interaction with the map. The views of the map provide a variety of fragmented “ways of seeing”, and highlight the understanding that both a photograph and a map offer singular (and limited) knowledge of a place, as well as its inhabitants. Each aperture is one of a collection of perspectives, offering fragmentary points of view. Each viewer leaves this presentation with a unique sense of the concept of “center”, based on their individual interaction and engagement with the work.
For us, the ideas explored in “The Center Can Not Hold” exhibition are inherently tied to our own architectural practice. Our work explores hyper-specific cultural cues culled from a project’s client, community, program and site. This research is used to construct a conceptual heuristic device, which in turn provides the architectural order and transcends convention. We also work to construct a more meaningful relationship between modern architecture and the experience of its inhabitants. Our work revolves around the rejection of the notion that order is generated from geometric logic external to the occupant or observer. Therefore, the underlying organization of the work of our Los Angeles and Salt Lake City architects is a deliberate choice to position people at dynamic “centers” of architecture and to let space and form unfold around a continuous, directional and experiential path.
We hope you will have an opportunity to visit the exhibition, and to challenge your own conceptions of place and presence in the search for a more meaningful response to one of the essential questions of architecture: Why?