March 12, 2006
Nearly 100,000 people will visit Gregory Colbert’s Ashes and Snow exhibit housed at its Nomadic Museum site walking distance from the Santa Monica Pier. More than 100 photographic images and three 35mm films transform this site into a filtered view of a world where the relationship of man, woman and child transcends time and space to a place where Maurice Sendak’s “Wild Things” rule.
Perhaps the exhibit will appeal to animal lovers who can lose themselves in a monochromatic wash of rust and rice paper. But there is appeal in the transformation of ordinary reusable, recyclable materials to an extraordinary gallery. As shipping containers, brown paper beams, dim lighting and lousy insulation (as evidenced by the cold March winds that seemed to own the museum’s inner sanctum) rise up out of the Pacific Ocean, this magnificent structure may well be worth the destination.
Out of ashes into the snow Canadian artist Gregory Colbert apparently spent some 13 years traveling the globe photographing elephants and tapirs and whales, oh my… Male erotic whale dancers, orangutans sucking a female arm and children kneeling before the God Buddha elephant. Apparently, Colbert does not manipulate his photographs, but with Rolex footing the bill it’s no wonder.
However contrived the photography is, it's the collaborative efforts of the artist, the Flying Elephant Foundation (nope, I didn't make that up) and the raw genius of Japanese architect Shigeru Ban that can pull off something as unique and sometimes monotonous as this exhibit.
Ban’s gifts include the U N High Commissioner for Refugees, where Ban created paper shelters made of plastic sheets and paper tubes for refugees in Rwanda. He also designed emergency housing in Kobe, Japan, after the 1995 earthquake. More recently, his paper houses provided shelter for people in Turkey and India after earthquakes destroyed their homes. In Sri Lanka, Ban built 100 houses made of earth blocks for victims of the tsunami of December 2004. Ban has also established a nongovernmental organization called the Volunteer Architects’ Network, whose members design buildings to help deal with housing shortages and poor living conditions around the world.
Oh and Ban's team was a finalist in the competition for the new World Trade Center in New York. Ban designed the inaugural Nomadic Museum, which debuted with the opening of the show on the Hudson River Park’s Pier 54 in New York City in March 2005. Ban’s the man!
Perhaps the exhibit will appeal to animal lovers who can lose themselves in a monochromatic wash of rust and rice paper. But there is appeal in the transformation of ordinary reusable, recyclable materials to an extraordinary gallery. As shipping containers, brown paper beams, dim lighting and lousy insulation (as evidenced by the cold March winds that seemed to own the museum’s inner sanctum) rise up out of the Pacific Ocean, this magnificent structure may well be worth the destination.
Out of ashes into the snow Canadian artist Gregory Colbert apparently spent some 13 years traveling the globe photographing elephants and tapirs and whales, oh my… Male erotic whale dancers, orangutans sucking a female arm and children kneeling before the God Buddha elephant. Apparently, Colbert does not manipulate his photographs, but with Rolex footing the bill it’s no wonder.
However contrived the photography is, it's the collaborative efforts of the artist, the Flying Elephant Foundation (nope, I didn't make that up) and the raw genius of Japanese architect Shigeru Ban that can pull off something as unique and sometimes monotonous as this exhibit.
Ban’s gifts include the U N High Commissioner for Refugees, where Ban created paper shelters made of plastic sheets and paper tubes for refugees in Rwanda. He also designed emergency housing in Kobe, Japan, after the 1995 earthquake. More recently, his paper houses provided shelter for people in Turkey and India after earthquakes destroyed their homes. In Sri Lanka, Ban built 100 houses made of earth blocks for victims of the tsunami of December 2004. Ban has also established a nongovernmental organization called the Volunteer Architects’ Network, whose members design buildings to help deal with housing shortages and poor living conditions around the world.
Oh and Ban's team was a finalist in the competition for the new World Trade Center in New York. Ban designed the inaugural Nomadic Museum, which debuted with the opening of the show on the Hudson River Park’s Pier 54 in New York City in March 2005. Ban’s the man!
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