Storefront for Art & Architecture

Alma On Dobbin helped organize and introduce to Budapest the acclaimed New York institution Storefront for Art and Architecture (storefront). In collaboration with N&n Architecture Gallery in Budapest, Storefront for Art and Architecture is exhibiting images and documents from its 24-year history.

Project Description

This presentation of archival materials highlights how Storefront for Art and Architecture expresses it's unique mission to locate and present moments where art and architectural practices intersect. The selection, the exhibition installation, the photography in the form of a slide show, and the display of the newsletters, which have become a quintessential feature of storefront exhibitions, is one way of telling this institution's story.

From more than 130 projects that comprise Storefront for Art and Architecture’s history, we selected slides from 30 projects that most clearly articulate Storefront for Art and Architecture’s current mission, as described below.

A significant number of now celebrated architects, and also artists, launched their careers at storefront. For example, the provocative spatial propositions of Dan Graham: Exhibition of Environmental Aesthetic /1986/, Bodybuildings: Diller + Scofidio /1987/, J Mandle performance: Six Square /1999/, and Wave Garden: Yusuke Obuchi /2002/. Deeply political investments revealed in projects such as Project DMZ /1988/, The New American Ghetto: Camilo José Vergara /1991/, and A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture /2003/, highlight storefront's insistence on putting difficult and challenging issues and questions directly on the table for analysis and discussion.

Public awareness of the built environment has been explored in a variety of exhibitions and media, among others centricity: the unified urban field /1988/ and unprojected habit: Cathcart, Fantauzzi, and Van Elslander /1992/. There is also a commitment to thinking about how history is interpreted, as seen with architecture and revolution in Cuba /2004/, Yves Klein: Air Architecture /2005/, and our current exhibition Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196x-197x /2006-07/.

As storefront approaches its 25th anniversary, we are reflecting on the mission and its cultural outpourings. Alongside archival materials, we decided to install a recent storefront commission by Pia Lindman titled "Fascia." This project is significant to the ongoing conversation about the concept and now landmark quality of storefront's façade, designed in 1993 by artist Vito Acconci and architect Steven Holl. The edited interview between Lindman and Acconci /august 2006/ that we present here on a video monitor, points to some keys issues around the façade, its creation and subsequent reception, which figures so prominently in storefront's current identity.

Organizers: András Böröcz, Theodora Doulamis, Camilla Lancaster, Yasmeen m. Siddiqui

Special thanks to: Galeria N&n

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