Mirrors

11 Feb-30 Apr 2022

Overview

Herald St is pleased to announce Mirrors, an exhibition of sculptures by Swiss artists Trix and Robert Haussmann. Initially presented at Fri Art Kunsthalle Fribourg in 2014, the installation consists of seven human- scaled works placed in the corners, on the floor, and on the walls of the gallery’s Museum St premises. Each piece is faceted with mirrors, a medium which has become synonymous with the architect-designer- artist duo’s academically rigorous yet playfully joyous practice.
Geometrically anthropomorphic, formalistically chaotic, dynamically illusionistic, lyrically minimal, poetically visionary... These comprise some of the ten thousand possible, and often paradoxical, combinations of the log-O-rithmic slide rule (1980) which, alongside the artists’ manifesto Manierismo Critico (Critical Mannerism) (1981) serves as a foundational text-based work in their celebrated postmodern practice. The husband- and-wife pair formed a professional relationship in 1967 with the establishment of their Allgemeine Entwurfsanstalt (General Design Institute) which upended the prevalent Bauhaus mantra of ‘form follows function’ and embraced a ‘critically-ironic’ approach. During a pivotal voyage to Italy, the couple were exposed to designers such as Ettore Sottsass and members of the Memphis Group, and became inspired by the radical experimentation they encountered. The Haussmanns saw this spirit as part of a lineage tracing back to sixteenth century Mannerism, a moment when existing formal principles were called into question. With the development of their own Critical Mannerism, they vowed to scrutinise Modernist ideals and embrace conceptions of wonder, mystery, and ornament, always with a sense of self-irony.

Artists

Press

Mirrors | Press Release
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