Futopia Faena by Studio Job
July 23–August 3, 2015
Faena Art Center
Aimé Paine 1169
Buenos Aires
T +4010 9233
Faena Art presents the story of four years of collaboration between Faena and the renowned Antwerp- and Amsterdam-based design duo Studio Job with an immersive exhibition that takes over the Sala Molinos, the main exhibition space of Faena Art Center Buenos Aires. For Futopia Faena by Studio Job, which opens to the public at FAC on July 23, 2015, Studio Job has intervened with the triple-height, cathedral-style windows of FAC and created stained glass designs that demonstrate the trajectory of Faena’s distinct symbology and transform the Sala Molinos into an alternative cathedral of light and color that will also serve as a roller dancing installation, with celebration and revelry at its heart.
Alan Faena notes, “Studio Job and Faena’s ongoing collaboration is a true manifestation of the Faena mission to foster cross-cultural exchange. Futopia Faena by Studio Job illustrates our personal path and stylistic evolution, and demonstrates the beautiful things we aim to share with the world. As we near the opening of the Faena District Miami Beach in November, we are particularly pleased to be able to present commissions they have created for that space with the Argentine public.”
“Working with Faena is not working…Playing with Faena is intellectual fun and the upcoming, multifaceted exhibition at Faena Art Center showcases how our longstanding collaboration with Faena has been an incredible series of inspiring experimentations,” notes Studio Job.
Futopia Faena by Studio Job
By Ximena Caminos, Chair of Faena Art and Executive Director of Faena Art Center
“For us, Faena is a mythic space, a place for ideals and utopic communities, a place for perfect worlds. It is both the ludic space where we project our dreams and the physical place where we attempt to materialize them. In order to conjure these concepts we imagine a realm that manifests itself and expands across three different spheres:
1. A kingdom of the spirit, a mirrored kingdom, conceived like a tree with its roots in the South and its crown in the North.
2. Urban installations that combine the highest cultural expressions, with the best of architecture and design. Installations surrounded by nature that are both the laboratories for our urban alchemy and the engines for large-scale transformations of social interaction.
3. A space in time, the perfect instant that settles in our heart and opens the doors of perception to other dimensions of being.
And so it was that we invited the members of Studio Job to be our heralds, and to create with us this constellation of signs and symbols that constitutes our heraldry.
The 11 original symbols that comprise this fertile visual universe were inspired by Alan’s life and the path that—through life—every person follows: The path of the spiritual warrior that begins with the conquest of oneself, with triumph over one’s own fears and continues to expand beyond oneself to exert a beneficial influence upon the world.
To us, Faena is Utopia, the utopia that is a part of those eternal human dreams and desires of harmonizing time and space in ideal enclaves. The utopia that flourished in unprecedented ways during the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Belle Époque, and rises again now, at the beginning of the 21st century, with a hope of reconciling culture and nature.”
About Studio Job
Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel founded Studio Job in 2000. In the 15 years since they graduated from the Dutch Design Academy in Eindhoven and formed the studio, they have become contemporary cultural pioneers who are revolutionizing common preconceptions about the distinct realms of art and design. Studio Job is a design studio in the true spirit of the Renaissance, where techniques are interchanged and disciplines are disregarded towards creation of the new—a place where culture, spirituality and aesthetics converge in one cacophonous space, and where production and craftsmanship yield one-of-a-kind objects and environments that bridge art and design, occupying and redefining the gray area in between. Contrary to contemporary ambivalence towards the decorative arts, Studio Job is revolutionizing perceptions of the genre, allowing for the opulence, ornamentation and intricacy of their designs while remaining committed to a high level of craftsmanship.
Press inquiries:
Faena Art Center
Florencia Binder
T +54 11 4021 5555 / 1436 / fbinder [at] faena.com
Resnicow + Associates
Barbara Escobar
T +212 671 5174 / bescobar [at] resnicow.com
