Volatile Structures: Jason Cori and Jeremy Scholar

The ancient roman architect Vitruvius (1^st c BC) identified the origins of architecture in nature; the trunk of a tree inspiring the form of a column and a canopy of leaves and branches providing models for thatched roofs and vaulting. These simple primitive structures mediated between human and natural environments, forming the basis of the great temples of Vitruvius' own day. These ideals were subsequently picked up and elaborated by Renaissance architects and the great exponents of Modernism such as Le Corbusier (1887-1965) who believed that ideal architectural form was rooted in connection with the natural environment. Le Corbusier's aim was to reconcile man and nature through modern architecture, incorporating the natural world into built spaces to promote healthy living. 

The relationship between the built and the natural continues to preoccupy architects and artists to this day.  Here, two generations of artists explore the ways in which humans attempt to control, frame or mark their presence in the natural world. Most of the structures represented suggest a kind of volatility, an instability or precariousness of either the manmade or the natural environment, or both. Indeed, in these, rarely do man and nature seem to achieve the harmony sought by Le Corbusier. 

In some cases, nature appears to retain the upper hand. In L'Etna da Taormina (1993) by Italian painter Salvatore (Salvo) Mangione (1947-2015) the dominating profile of the smoking volcano of his native Sicily presides over the landscape, a constant reminder of its capacity to erupt at any moment. Salvo's hyper-saturated vibrant landscapes of the 1980s and 90s, always devoid of any figures, mark a decisive shift from his earlier photographic and more conceptual work. Here, by focussing on the defining features of the landscape and native plant species, Salvo constructs an idealised world entirely out of vibrant colour, as if recreating a romanticised memory or referring back to a period predating industrialisation. 

Working across media, in both ceramic and paint, American artist Ken Price (1935-2012), subverts the functionality of traditional ceramics, mixing Bauhaus aesthetics of art and design with folk pottery to create biomorphic sculptures with iridescent skins such as Iggy (2008). In his drawings, paintings and prints, Price revels in depicting landscapes with erupting volcanoes or cityscapes with menacing smog-filled or cyclonic skies as in Navajo Country (2007) in which a trailer home isolated in a desert landscape sits vulnerably at the foot of a great rocky outcrop beneath a darkening sky.

Some of the artists featured here focus on the interrelatedness of interior and exterior spaces. Swedish artist, Karin Mamma Andersson (b. 1962) for example creates layered, highly psychological compositions, often combining domestic interiors with views onto mountainous backdrops, trees, snow, and the wooden cabins of her native Sweden. Abandoned(2006), evokes a particularly solemn mood, an interior with peeling walls and heaped furniture, the discarded remnants of a former life. A curtained window at the centre of the composition provides a glimpse onto the wintery landscape beyond, as if offering an alternative to the forsaken life within.  

In 1960, Le Corbusier completed the Unité d'Habitation, his utopic communal living housing project built as a 'vertical garden city' in Briey-en-Forêt, France. By the time Scottish artist Peter Doig (b. 1959) visited in the 1990s however, the building had fallen into disrepair. Doig was particularly struck by the way the modernist building was becoming subsumed by the dense, surrounding forest. The structure soon became a touchstone in his works, with most showing just glimpses of the building behind a thick screen of trees. Briey Interior (1996) is a rare exception in which Doig paints a cropped view out of the building from within. Here, the green of the dense forest is reduced to a patterned blur and the focus is shifted to the grids created by the verticals of the windows and the horizontal risers of the staircase, producing an almost abstract effect. Doig seems to both celebrate Le Corbusier's utopic aim of harmonising architecture and nature and, in portraying the abandonment of this building by its inhabitants, to underscore the structure's volatile state. 

Text by Dr. Jennifer Sliwka