Artist:
Kasper Akhøj (born 1976 in Copenhagen, Denmark; lives and works in Copenhagen and New York City, USA).
Description:
“In the slide installation Untitled (Schindler/Gray) (2006), Akhøj interrelates the histories of two early modern houses: Eileen Gray’s Villa E.1027 in Roquebrune—Cap Martin, France (1926-1929), and Rudolph M. Schindler’s Kings Rd. House in Hollywood (1921-1922). A gruff voiceover narrates the related paths which form a circular tale of almost tabloid dimension of love, murder and ruin.”
—”Kasper Akhøj: After the Fair,” WIELS Contemporary Art Centre.
“The Schindler House is an exhibition space now, and it’s one of a handful of early west coast modernist houses that you can visit if you are in LA, like the Eames Case Study House. You might go and visit if you are interested in the history of modern architecture and modernism. But often lacking in the narratives around those early sites of experiment, I found, is the background story of why, Schindler for example, decided to built his house the way he did, and what role his wife Pauline had in the project as well. The initial thoughts behind that project and the peculiar history that ties to the place in the time between it being built and becoming a museum, was not something that had been written about and it was really something that I came across by coincidence.”
—Kasper Akhøj, “Conversation with Kasper Akhøj,” interview by Angelique Campens, Domus, December 10, 2010.