Beyond Environment at LACE

September 4 -November 9, 2014

Beyond Environment, curated by Emanuele Piccardo and Amit Wolf, explores the potent interchange between Architecture, Land Art, and Performance Art, that emerged through the Italian architect Gianni Pettena’s idealized collaborations with the American artists Allan Kaprow and Robert Smithson, in the 1970s.

This exhibition, held at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, showcases contractual, electroacoustic, and video aspects of Pettena’s work, alongside Kaprow’s work Happenings (1958), and a forgotten collection of drawings that Smithson created in preparation for Asphalt Rundown (1969) in Rome. These are supplemented by the works of Italian artist groups UFO, and 9999, as well as by an environmental dialogue between Pettena and Pentagon (a Los Angeles based collective), which recreates anew this important architecture-art complex.

Beyond Environment was made possible by the Graham Foundation and Woodbury University School of Architecture, with additional support provided by the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles and Azzurra.

Read here the Domus and the LA Times Review.

Photo By Tyler McMartin
Gianni Pettina, Ice House II, 1972
UFO, Superurbeffimero n.7, San Giovanni Valdarno, 1968
Ugo La Pietra, Copro una strada e ne faccio un’altra, Campo Urbano, Como, 1969

la-foto-2