Walk into the pink painted redwood walls and immediately you are transported back into a historical story that took place in the [Schindler House](https://makcenter.org/programming/soft-schindler/): in 1949 Pauline Schindler painted her half of the house a salmon pink color and her ex-husband, R.M. Schindler, who shared the house, believed that this violated “modernism” and what he viewed to be an “honest expression of natural materials.” Fast forward to today and this exhibition understands Pauline’s act as changing the way people may view what a house truly stands for; her softness is resistance. As well, the exhibit showcases multiple narratives that can be seen as a basis for contemporary architectural spaces and artwork. The basis for the exhibit is to “use the concept of softness to encourage a politics of reevaluation: If this space/sculpture/material isn't what was first assumed, what other assumptions need challenging?”
The Schindler House is not considered a binary, but is a space of fluidity and alternating domesticities, such as dinner parties, political debates, and love affairs, etc. For example, the house was a salon used by art dealer Galka Scheyer.
The artists involved in Soft Schindler convey their ideas of what the incompleteness of binaries in various mediums such as architecture, sculpture, and design are. These binaries include femininity vs masculinity, inside vs outside, heavy vs light, and rational vs emotional. Through conveying incompleteness of binaries through art, the participants also shape how these ideas are old-fashioned. Although using different mediums, the artists “makes non-conforming aesthetics and ideologies manifest in space.”
The artists involved come from all over the world, such as AGENdA agencia de arquitectura from Medellin, Columbia, Pedro Ignacio Alonso and Hugo Palmarola from Santiago, Chile, Anna Puigjaner – MAIO from Barcelona, Spain, Tanya Aguiñiga from Los Angeles, Sonja Gerdes from Los Angeles and Berlin, Jorge Otero-Pailos from New York, and many more.
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The exhibit takes place until February 16, 2020
Schindler House | 835 N Kings Road. West Hollywood, CA 90069
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