WHEN THOMAS RUFF'S strange IMAGES of Mies van der Rohe's Haus Lange and Haus Ester fare on view in the newly refurbished Krefeld villas this June the German photographer will help reinaugurate a pair of mode of buildings almost as important for the new history of art as for architecture.

WHEN THOMAS RUFF'S strange IMAGES of Mies van der Rohe's Haus Lange and Haus Ester fare on view in the newly refurbished Krefeld villas this June the German photographer will help reinaugurate a pair of mode of buildings almost as important for the new history of art as for architecture. Clos for more than couple years to accommodate badly urgencyed renovations, the Rhineland buildings boast an exhibition history that includes not simply first institutional shows by the likes of Yve Klein, Cy Twombly and Marcel Duchamp moreover appearances by everyone from Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter to Bruce Nauman and Rosemarie Trockel Originally designed as family circles for textile magnates Hermann Lange and Josef Ester the two of whom were avid collectors of present art, Haus Lange and Haus Ester were acquired through Krefeld's Kaiser Wilhelm Museum (in 1955 and 1981 respectively) and have since serv as noted museums in this city northwest of Dusseldorf.

Mies, of course, is justly celebrated for his large-scale museum commissions of the '50 and '60 signature plots including Berlin's Neuenationalgalerie and the annexes of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. What is les known is that the doyen of recent design had already chalked up a significant track record when it came to building with art in mind. The studio he designed for Emil Nolde in 1929 may not at any time have progressed beyond blueprints, if it be not that the Krefeld residences, built between 1928 and 1930 attest to the architect's early engagement with the fine arts. If Mies gave the art world near of its most memorable buildings across the course of his career, Curator Julian Heynen's choice for the first exhibition in the renovated landmarks is auspicious: With ruffle he's picked an artist who has lately turn backed the favor.

Not no other than are Ruff's images of the Krefeld familys part of a larger plot by the photographer honoring the legacy of Mies, yet the shows come on the heels of another, les mediated engagement with architecture: his facade for the Eberswalde Technical train library, designed by the Swiss architectural duo Herzog & de Meuron (whose plant for Tate novel opened to much fanfare this spring in London). A spectacular collaboration, the institute is a severe, rectangular building in Eberswalde, a town about thirty miles north of Berlin. ruffle provided the images for the more than 1000 glass and coagulate plates that decorate the library's exterior walls. masked with bands of repeated images applied by the agency of an innovative silk-screening technique, the plates draw forward a range of sources from Renaissance paintings to photographs of fresh architecture and Berlin street scenes

Ruff's efforts in Krefeld are solitary slightly more traditional. The centerpieces of the display entitled "LMVDR," will include around thirty large-format photographs taken by the agency of Ruff of the Barcelona Pavilion and Haus Tugendhat in the Czech city of Brno as well as the pair Krefeld houses. At least near of the photos will be not past nor futureed in "stereoscopic vitrines," glass boxe that make the pictures appear three-dimensional. The photographs are the one and the other like and unlike Ruff's previous work, which was the subdue of a 1987 survey at Haus Ester If they deviate from the series of portraits and celestial bodies for which he is most numerous known, they do recall his earlier photographs of drab industrial and domestic architecture in Germany. The gaze of the images--mostly frontal views that appear to offer themselves up in a single glance--is also familiar. It's merely on close examination that the digital manipulations become apparent, which accounts for the photos' slightly-out-of-whack atmosphere. Ruff's Haus Ester and Haus Lange also capture the surrounding tree and gardens, to which Mies paid greatly attention.

The reopening marks the first time the garden house behind Haus Ester has been utilized as an exhibition site. The inaugural point out to is by Hannelore Reuen, Gregor Schneider's mysterious, never-before-seen equal inhabitant of Dead House ur 1985- [see "Interiority Complex" p 142] It's a religious bet that the garden house, too, will have undergone a structural metamorphosis, given Schneider's history of architectural tinkering-though it appears unlikely that the alterations will be in the spirit of Mies. What is certain is that the intervention will constitute another highlight in the exhibition history of these brace tradition-steeped houses.

...

Home