PHANTOM. Mies as Rendered Society

2012–17

Andrés Jaque (Spanish, born 1971)
Office for Political Innovation (Spanish, founded 2003)

This installation aims to unravel the myth of Mies van der Rohe as a solitary genius. Fundació Mies commissioned Andrés Jaque in 2012 to create a site-specific intervention in Mies’s most famous building, the Barcelona Pavilion. The original Pavilion of 1929 was reconstructed in 1986 with the fundamental addition of a basement. Jaque’s installation focused on this lower level, which was an overlooked yet significant part of the building, introducing new questions for contemporary scholarship about Mies. The intervention exposes—like the phantom of the Pavilion’s past—the building’s hidden context: the networks of people, technologies, and institutions that made it possible. PHANTOM. Mies as Rendered Society consists of all the objects and materials found in the basement that have contributed to rebuilding and maintaining Mies’s iconic building and reputation. This installation includes architectural fragments such as the velvet curtains, travertine plates, a spare Barcelona chair now broken, as well as contemporary cleaning products and devices that support the Pavilion’s maintenance. Together these objects reveal the Barcelona Pavilion as a social construction resulting from specific technological moments and civic initiatives.

Status: On View, Gallery 285
Department: Architecture and Design

Artist: Andres Jaque
Title: PHANTOM. Mies as Rendered Society
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Made 2012–2017
Medium: Mixed media installation
Dimensions: Variable
Credit Line: Gift of Fundació Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona
Reference Number: 2019.899

The Art Institute of Chicago, “Past Forward: Architecture and Design Collection at the Art Institute,” December 21, 2019–June 14, 2020.

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