29 gennaio - 10 marzo 2012, Berlin
Esther Schipper is pleased to present the first exhibition of drawings by French architect Claude Parent in Germany. By the early-1960s, Claude Parent had already had a successful architectural career. With the completion in 1952 of ‘Maison G&rsquo’ (together with Ionel Schein), he had introduced American bungalow-style modernism in France and with the design of various supermarkets in the greater Paris area (Nanterre, 1958; La Celle Saint Cloud, 1959; Athis-Mons, 1961) firmly been established as a name in French architecture. He worked closely with Yves Klein on the design of a rocket and designed the home of the fellow architect, sculptor and painter Andrèeacute; Bloc. Parent gained further recognition in the 1960s, when together with philosopher and urbanist Paul Virilio he developed the ‘oblique function’ theory that was inspired by a joint visit to WWII bunkers situated on the Atlantic Wall. The theory focuses on the inclined plane as a new relationship between architecture and the body. Forming the ‘Architecture Principe’ group, investigating a new kind of interplay between architecture and urbanism, they rejected the traditional axes of horizontal / vertical and used oblique planes in an architecture of disequilibrium; to turn living spaces into dynamic areas of bodies in movement. Parent’s first and his most spectacular buildings harnessing this theory is the church of Sainte-Bernadette du Banlay at Nevers completed in 1966. In 1970, together with Virilio, he published Vivre à l’Oblique, the manifesto of the ‘Oblique Architecture’ movement. In the same year, he installed a sloped floor in the French pavilion at the 35th Venice Biennale. His architectural style has not been entirely uncontroversial as in 1986 he participated in the design of Cattenom, a nuclear power plant situated on the river Moselle in Lorraine, France. Esther Schipper shows two series of drawings titled Incisions and Open-Limit in which Parent develops plans for his Ville oblique, in effect an entirely ’sloped’ city. Info: www.estherschipper.com