Inside Space: Experiments in Redefining Rooms

January 27 - April 8, 2000

Shaved tan carpet with a long rectilinear cutout shows the dark rubber flooring underneath.

Oona Stern, Welcome (MIT), detail, 2001, shaved carpet. Installation view, MIT List Visual Arts Center, 2000. Courtesy of the artist.

Explore all artists who have exhibited at the List in our Artist Index.

Inside Space: Experiments in Redefining Rooms is comprised of six installations by artists and/or artist teams critically engaging the language of architecture.

The artists in this international group are renowned for deconstructing the norms of the built world by reiterating, materially re-gendering, duplicating, de-rationalizing, de-functionalizing, or disorienting the visitor within their works. By mixing both poetic and analytic strategies, Inside Space seeks to address the way the norms of architecture structure and give form to both our social and imaginary lives. It will be the first exhibition in the Boston area for all of the artists.

Monica Bonvicini (born in Venice, living in Berlin and Los Angeles) finds in domestic spaces the expression of patriarchal power.

Elmgreen and Dragset (Michael Elmgreen born in Denmark; Ingar Dragset born in Norway; both living in Berlin) will continue their series of Powerless Structures, which they began in 1997 by presenting a new, disorienting room structure.

Teresita Fernandez (born in Miami, living in Brooklyn) luscious Supernovas are a series of circular optical pools which, in their roundness and seeming great depth, dissolve the rigid rectangular room in which they are situated.

Juan Maidagan and Dolores Zinny’s (born in Rosario, Argentina, living in New York City and Argentina) Movement in Art consists of two over-scale, dark and deep curved closets situated in corners. Recent solo projects have been mounted at The Moderna Museet in Stockholm and The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City.

Henrik Olesen (born in Denmark, living and working in Berlin) creates environments that are somewhat uncomfortable, so that each visitor gets the sense of not belonging that the disenfranchised in society feel.

Oona Stern (born in New York, living in New York) is creating a new installation entitled Welcome (MIT) using altered industrial carpet installed in and around the List Center’s entrance.