TATLIN NEWS №37

A TREE OUT OF A HOUSE 10.02.07‑22.04.07

forth. A CITY FOR EVERYONE

Exhibition of Guy Ben-Ner’s «Treehouse Kit», Museum of Contemporary Arts, Montreal, Canada www. macm. org The industrial society and nature is a problem that seems impossible to solve to the advantage of the latter even at the level of politics. Contemporary artists and designers present their option as they use their main arms – arts and irony. You cannot but marvel at the surprising ingenuity of the master who turns a tree into unique pieces of furniture. The Museum of Contemporary Arts in Montreal presents a project entitled «A Treehouse Kit» by an Israeli artist Guy Ben-Ner who works in New York and Berlin. Turning to drawing, sculpture and video first of all Ben-Ner takes ideas for his projects from daily life, having recruited his family and using his own apartment and furniture. Whatever surrounds the author is involved in the process of creating pieces of art. In the Treehouse Kit project the artist presents a new interpretation of a story about Robinson Crusoe, in the context of a contemporary society. The installation consists of the two components – a modular wooden sculpture representing a tree and a video where the artist himself plays the role of Crusoe employing all his symbolic attributes – a long beard and blue-flowered Bermuda shorts. In the form of a parody the latter- day Crusoe dismantles the tree and cleverly puts it back together in the form of furniture: a rocking chair, a table, a parasol, a bed. Simultaneously presenting the two parts (the video and the sculpture) he takes us on a circular journey in which the furniture made from the tree is actually the material from which the tree was created, and so

18.01.07‑03.03.07 Exhibition «Public City», Center for New London Architecture, London, Great Britain www.newlondonarchitecture.org In the twenty century the two following directions prevailed in town planning, the first one was lead by Ebenezer Howard and called «The City in Gardens» and the second one proclaimed by Le Corbusier was modernism. The advocates of the first movement asserted that country houses with gardens were necessary, the advocates of the second one opted for high-rise apartment blocks in public parks. Anyhow, they both emerged as a result of trying to comprehend the Victorian city filled with people, with its insanitary conditions, as alternatives to this kind of the city and immediately received negative assessment from architects and town planners as to the dense development of city centers. At the same time they attracted attention to the necessity of having public «green» zones. Development in this area went with varying success, also due to the economical situation that provoked dense development of city centers. But every year voices supporting public space grew louder and louder until eventually in 2002 the mayor of the city offered architects to carry out reconstruction of 100 parks and transport junctions in order to reduce the car and human traffic. Currently over 100 projects are presented in the Center, and these are united by a single subject, that is creating a city for everyone. LIVE DOCUMENTS 18.01.07 – 10.03.07 Photo exhibition by Michael Collins “Record Pictures” CUBE Centre for the Urban Built Environment, Manchester, Great Britain www.cube.org.uk

ENGLISH VERSION

Reproducing life in “forms

ТАТЛИН_NEWS №1(37)42_2007 117