Artist:

Xavier Delory (b. 1973, Liege, Belgium; lives and works in Brussels)

Description:

A series of digital photomontages showing buildings by Le Corbusier in a state of dereliction and ruin. The images above are Pilgrimage (2014), an image of the Villa Savoye, and The End of Modernity (2015), showing the chapel at Notre-Dame-du-Haut, Ronchamp. Other photo series include graffiti on the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (All Over, 2019).

“Pilgrimage along Modernity” is a tribute to the Modernist architectural movement born in the 1920s. This tribute takes the form of digital artistic interventions inspired by the unique context of each of the buildings studied. This new perspective on architecture aims to develop an original meaning or to accentuate an already existing one. This method of collage, of mixing and recycling pre-existing forms could be considered Postmodernist, in opposition to the philosophy of Modernist architects characterised by its search for originality, the desire to create new forms and its presumptive concluding of the narrative. The buildings covered in this series range from the purist period of the 1920s to the more lyrical period of the 1960s. For some, Modernist architecture is synonymous with progress, for others, with totalitarianism and formalism. This period of architectural history is still alive in spirit, as seen in the sometimes very virulent articles and books still published on this subject.” – Xavier Delory