A Lebbeus Woods exhibition is now on view at a83 in Lower Manhattan. The exhibition, titled Undercurrents, displays two projects by Woods: Turbulence (1991–92) and The Storm (2001–02).
Woods was born in 1940 and died in 2012. He taught at The Cooper Union for decades, and is known today for his fantastical and critical drawings of postwar architecture.
For the exhibition a83 collaborated with the Estate of Lebbeus Woods. The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture Archive was also a partner.
Drawings from the Turbulence series are located in a83’s front gallery. The Storm drawings are placed to the rear.
Two vitrines with drawings are placed in the center of the front gallery space. The vitrines contain process sketches, photographs of Woods at work, and exhibition ephemera.
More drawings from the Turbulence series line the walls. The backroom restages The Storm, a project Woods displayed at The Cooper Union’s Houghton Gallery in 2002.
The Storm at Houghton Gallery consisted of red wooden rods fabricated by Shandor Hassan and assembled by Alexander Gil and Amir Shahrokhi, suspended within a post-tensioned cable system.
In the gallery’s backroom red wooden rods line walls that were painted black.
A large black box in the center of the backroom features a reconstructed scale model of The Storm exhibition at The Cooper Union’s Houghton Gallery that visitors can peek into.
Grouped together, visitors are immersed in drawings and models that demonstrate Woods’s interest in conveying “built multiplicity,” per a curatorial statement.
The exhibition posits “a close reading of Woods’ constructed fields” and reveals “how conceptual generators can translate across mediums,” curators said. Woods’s works touch on labor and cultural and environmental systems.
On September 6, a83 will launch a new book about Woods that Clara Syme and Owen Nichols published in collaboration with AJ Artemel and the Estate of Lebbeus Woods, led by Aleksandra Wagner.
Undercurrents is on view through September 10.