GALLERY GALLERY

PEZO VON ELLRICHSHAUSEN
This is an architectural device without a definite scale and scope. It is a modest block of wood mechanically divided into fifteen square section pieces. The whole system is composed by a progressive series of units in a sequence that goes from one piece of five centimetres to five pieces of one centimetre. This sequence is both naïvely proportional and hypothetically reversible; the third unit has three pieces with a section of three centimetres. There is also a regular length of each piece equal to five times the side of the biggest section. A regular length that not only defines a distinctive visual character for each of the units but also their specific physical weight and formal correspondence. Since every unit has a precise size and quantity, they can be grouped together in a single and compact section of seven by fifteen centimetres. This dense wooden object has the potential to be unfolded in an infinite set of arrangements and locations. There are only three rules to be followed in those irregular, and somehow informal, dispositions: that all the pieces must be occupied in every composition (to close the system in itself); that the pieces must be only articulated in right angles (to follow the rectangularity of the pieces themselves); and that every piece should touch, at least once, another piece (to avoid detached leftovers of the totality). There are no predefined structures but only these three basic parameters.

We could claim that the very nature of this stretched device functions as a measuring tool. Its idealized serial compactness only makes sense when extended in space, in a particular place. The aerial dimension of the articulated pieces has the capacity to be adapted to the irregularities of the existing context. The wooden pieces, as a resulting unique balanced structure, not only have the capacity to activate the found place but also to mediate the logical series of abstract magnitudes with those of a random reality. The individual section and weight of the pieces are instrumental to a sense of correct appropriation of the found place. Every structure is only possible in its setting. It cannot be anticipated nor replicated. Since each case is guided by simple general rules, it is neither fully specific nor exemplary for another case. Despite the fact that the structure is an explicitly improvised reaction to a circumstance, it portrays an erratic impression of generality, of a rather standard and non-representative figure. It could even be read in resemblance to those well know Suprematist composition, but without their dogmatic, promotional or even ethical pretensions. This is a modest architectural device with almost no other fortune than its own immediacy, intimacy and abandonment. Architectural, in its own right, not only because of its spatial dimension but because it is meant to be built and inhabited, at least provisionally, in relation and implicit agreement with other people.

15 wooden pieces in a block of 7x15x25cm, composed by 1 piece of 5x5x25cm, 2 pieces of 4x4x25cm, 3 pieces of 3x3x25cm, 4 pieces of 2x2x25cm and 5 pieces of 1x1x25cm.