Pezo von Ellrichshausen
Concepción, Chile
WebsitePezo von Ellrichshausen is an art and architecture studio founded in 2002 by Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen. They live and work in the southern Chilean city of Concepcion and teach regularly at the IIT in Chicago. Their work has been distinguished with several international awards, edited in monographic publications and widely exhibited, among other venues, at the Venice Biennale, the Royal Academy of Arts in London and at the MoMA in New York
CAB 2 Contribution
Project Overview
Finite Format 04
Pezo von Ellrichshausen have an ongoing interest in multiples, their project Finite Format 04 runs through the serial sequencing of an imagined building form: half tower and half plinth. The project demonstrates a mathematical obsession; the imagined building is presented here as an outline described by six factors that resulted in 729 variations, framed and hung in a monumental salon-style grid. Following a long modernist tradition of architects who paint, Pezo von Ellrichshausen produce watercolor studies to introduce a seemingly random combination of 81 different colors highlighting the individuality of each building that results from their sequencing. The serial nature of these works might suggest a reading against a lineage of art from the 1970s often called process or serial art, which exhausted an idea or concept in a monontous display. In architecture around the same time the search for a conceptual practice paradoxically led to the production of works of art rather than instructions for buildings, as demonstrated by Stanley Tigerman’s 1964–1968 paintings on the opposite wall.