Veronika Kellndorfer

Dialogue with Silver Lake,

Metabolism of Architecture

Neutra VDL House

June 3rd – July 30th 2023

Opening: Saturday, June 3, 4 – 7PM

RSVP via Eventbrite

Neutra VDL is pleased to welcome visitors back to the house on behalf of Dialogue with Silver Lake Metabolism of Architecture, a site-specific exhibition by artist Veronika Kellndorfer at the VDL House (1932 / 1965).​

Veronika Kellndorfer's exhibition explores the idea that architecture serves as a preservation of history. She investigates how the past manifests itself in buildings and how these traces can be transformed into images of architectural spaces. Her work raises essential questions concerning representation and the capacity of art to create accurate and evocative images of architecture. After immersing herself in the Neutra VDL House's history and design during an intensive research period in March 2022, Kellndorfer has produced a collection of new works that respond to the site's context, history, and design.

Richard Neutra is considered one of the most significant architects of the mid-century modernist movement and pioneered the creation of an integrated relationship between built structures and the natural environment. He sought to blur the boundaries between interior and exterior, using the landscape as a foundation for his designs. At the Neutra VDL House, he integrated water elements into the building's design, creating a dialogue between the structure and its surroundings. Kellndorfer's artistic intervention manifests as freestanding glass sculptures that reflect the building's mirrors and watery surfaces. The engraved silkscreened images capture the interplay of light and shadow on the building's surfaces, engendering a dynamic connection between the architecture and its environment.

Kellndorfer's work also acknowledges the Neutra VDL House's history, which succumbed to a destructive fire in March 1963. A poignant tribute to the lost structure, Kellndorfer employs a drone to hover over Silver Lake, carrying a burning model of the original VDL House. This dramatic artistic intervention adds an evocative layer of meaning to the architect's private spaces, questioning the correlation between image and real space in the present moment. Kellndorfer's work at the VDL House builds on a series of exhibitions she began in 2015 at Lina Bo Bardi's Casa de Vidro and extended in 2020 at Mies van der Rohe's Landhaus Lemke. This exhibition underscores her profound engagement with the intersection of art, architecture, and history.

Veronika Kellndorfer (Berlin) is a visual artist. She transfers her photographs of architecture and plants as silkscreen prints fired into glass. Transparency, reflection and opacity, she uses the materiality of glass and textile to make visible the disturbing potentials and aesthetic appearance of architectural icons. She is currently working on a solo exhibition at VDL Neutra House, Los Angeles, 2023 and has most recently been represented at Neue Nationalgalerie, 2023 Mies Van der Rohe Haus, 2020 and original Bauhaus exhibition, 2019 in Berlin. On Lina Bo Bardi, she showed works at the Curitiba Biennial at Museu Oscar Niemeyer, 2019, the National Museum Oslo, 2017, Christopher Grimes Gallery, 2016, Casa de Vidro, São Paulo, 2015 and Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, 2014. In Los Angeles she held exhibitions at the USC Verle Annis Gallery, 2003, at the Hammer Museum 2008 and 2006-2018 at the Christopher Grimes Gallery and the Getty Center, 2019.

About the organizers —

Dialogue with Silver Lake, Metabolism of Architecture is organized by artist Veronika Kellndorfer, the Neutra VDL House director Noam Saragosti, and Christopher Grimes Projects.

The Neutra VDL Studio and Residences is a National Historic Landmark and house museum devoted to cultivating education, architecture, and art.

www.neutra-vdl.org  / @vdlhouse

Christopher Grimes Projects is an art organization that represents and collaborates with artists to develop architecturally driven, conceptual site-specific projects and facilitate experimentation across all mediums. www.cgrimes.com

Exhibition supported by VATMH e.V. with funds from the German Federal Foreign Office.

In collaboration with the architect Axel Ludolf. Special Thanks to Kai Loebach