Curated by Dieter Bogner and João Ribas

Over the course of the past decade, architecture has seen a rekindling of interest in organicism and biologically inspired methods. While such tendencies were never dominant in the modernist project, they found expression in the work of iconoclastic designers like Frederick Kiesler. Kiesler was affiliated with many well-known twentieth-century figures and movements—he was involved with De Stijl, was a friend of Duchamp’s, and arranged the premiere of Léger’s Ballet Mechanique, 1924—but his complex theories about the relationships among biology, environment, and architecture never dovetailed with the interests of high modernism. Nevertheless, his work has influenced a number of contemporary architects, and this exhibition of drawings and archival items from 1937 to 1965 will allow us to examine the historical underpinnings of currently popular neobiological forms.

— Kevin Pratt