What is it that an architectural drawing does and how does it do it? How can we distill beauty from cosmetics? How can new modes of representation produce new architectures and new sensibilities?

Aesthetics/Anesthetics is an exhibition about architectural drawings.

Aesthetics/Anesthetics invites audiences to reflect on the performing properties of architectural drawings, their purpose and aesthetic qualities, encouraging the architectural community and other creatives to push drawings, and with it architecture, beyond inherited acknowledged values. An image [and its after-image] carries within itself a history [or performative script] of characters, discourses, and conventions. During the last ten years there has been a resurgence of certain representational devices that have become architectural clichés operating almost as placeholders or decorative elements of an architecture unable to draw itself. We all have seen them: birds on beautiful skies, happy children with balloons, those axonometries… this exhibition is an invitation to let those clichés go and explore the performativity of the architectural drawing as a way to generate a new imaginary. The 30 drawings on display are an open door to reclaim a lost territory: the drawing.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is a collection of 30 newly commissioned architectural drawings. Each drawing depicts the Storefront Gallery space at 97 Kenmare, from the perspectives of a diverse group of emerging and established architects worldwide. The drawings reveal a different aspect of the space and are representative of the generative properties of the architect’s drawing. The gallery space, wallpapered with sourced images of birds, axonometries, children, green and comics cut from drawings produced in the past five years, reflects on the specific graphic devices used by architects to ignite certain feelings and properties in their drawings that the architectural drawing itself is unable to convey: skies filled with birds to portray movement, axonometries as a mode of applied intellectuality, children as life generators, green surfaces as magic ecological surfaces, or comics as prosthetic communicative devices.

ON-LINE AUCTION Each of the 30 works commissioned for the Aesthetics/Anesthetics exhibition will be included in the 2012 summer benefit architecture drawing auction, which will close at midnight on July 28, 2012.Proceeds will support Storefront for Art and Architecture’s exhibitions and programs. To visit the auction online, go to http://www.storefrontnews.org/silentauction. For additional auction information, please contact Zeynep Goksel at [email protected]

Commissioned Artists Include:

Vito Acconci [New York] Alisa Andrasek [London] Aziza Chaouni [Toronto and Fez] Luis Callejas [Colombia] Teddy Cruz [Tijuana] Frida Escobedo [Mexico] ESKYIU – Eric Schuldenfrei and Marisa Yiu [ Hong Kong] Ling Fan [Beijing] Interboro Partners [New York] Sam Jacob [London] Andres Jaque [Madrid] June 14 Meyer-Grohbrügge&Chermayeff – Johanna Meyer-Grohbrügge and Sam Chermayeff [Germany, New York] Perry Kulper [Ann Arbor] Jimenez Lai [Chicago] Juergen Mayer H. [Berlin] Leong Leong -Chris Leong & Dominic Leong [New York] LTL -Paul Lewis, Mark Tsurumaki, David Lewis [New York] MOS -Michael Meredith & Hilary Sample [New York] OFFICE – Kersten Geers & David Van Severen [Brussels] Jorge Otero-Pailos [New York] Productora [Mexico DF] Philippe Rahm [Paris] Noura Al Sayeh [Bahrain] Sho Shigematsu [OMA New York] Julien De Smedt [Brussels-New York] STAR strategies + architecture -Beatriz Ramo [Rotterdam] Superpool – Selva Gurdogan – Gregers Tang Thomsen [Istanbul] VisionArc Landon Brown-Toshiko Mori [New York] WW – Sarah Whiting, Ron Witte- [Houston] Michael Young – Young & Ayata [New York] Alejandro Zaera Polo [London-New York] Andrew Zago [Los Angeles]