Luisa Lambri

The Menil Collection
1533 Sul Ross Street
March 12–June 27, 2004

Curated by Matthew Drutt

Luisa Lambri’s elegant, often monochromatic photographs of isolated architectural details like facades, corridors, and venetian blind–covered windows could represent any number of buildings anywhere. That they are always untitled adds to the mystery. But Lambri is engaged in a dialogue with the iconic, not the anonymous—the subjects of her photographic investigations include Corbusier, Niemeyer, and Neutra. And now Philip Johnson: A photograph of the Houston residence he designed for John and Dominique de Menil was commissioned on the occasion of this solo exhibition, Lambri’s first at a US museum. The thirty-three works on view and seventeen previously unpublished photos feature in the catalogue with an essay by Menil chief curator Matthew Drutt.

— Meghan Dailey

Anne Wilson

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
5216 Montrose Boulevard
January 7, 2004–April 11, 2003

Curated by Valerie Cassel

Anne Wilson’s captivating form of stitch witchery conjures works from string, hair, and cloth, offering a fresh, foreboding, and fetishistic take on textile-based media. Her mutable Topologies, an epic landscape of odd constructions made from black lace, thread, and pins strewn over a white wood support, was a highlight of the 2002 Whitney Biennial. Now, as part of CAM’s Perspectives series, the Chicago-based artist displays a trio of installations dating from the last four years that expand on feminine/domestic notions to include allusions to sex and death, the organic and the electronic. Organized by associate curator Valerie Cassel, who also contributes an essay to the catalogue, the show unveils Wilson’s most recent work, Errant Behaviors, a video and sound installation.

— Julie Caniglia

Ant Farm

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA)
2155 Center Street
January 21–April 26, 2004

Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston
4173 Elgin Street
January 15–March 13, 2005

ZKM | Center for Art and Media
Lorenzstraße 19
June 11, 2013–July 24, 2005

ICA - Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Bergamot Station G1 2525 Michigan Avenue
July 2–August 14, 2004

Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania 118 South 36th Street
September 10–December 12, 2004

Curated by Constance Lewallen and Steve Seid

Europe in the 1960s and ’70s was a heady hodgepodge of radical utopian architectural groups such as Archigram, Utopie, and Superstudio. But the US had renegade architects Chip Lord, Doug Michels, and Curtis Schreier—aka Ant Farm. Deprived of a centuries-old architectural history to rebel against, the Ant Farmers integrated architecture with art, design, and video, all with a singular wittiness. This, their first museum retrospective, features over two hundred components dating from 1968 to 1978, including blueprints, architectural models, collages, video, and sculpture.

— Annette Ferrara