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Original Architectural Drawings and Prints by Richard Fleischner

Organized by the MIT List Visual Arts Center
May 19 - September 8, 2006


photo courtesy of the MIT List Visual Arts Center

In 1985, architect I.M. Pei (MIT '40) and artists Scott Burton, Kenneth Noland, and Richard Fleischner collaborated on a Percent-for-Art Program for MIT's Wiesner Building, home to the List Visual Arts Center and the Media Lab.   The project included the adjacent plaza, which lies between the Wiesner Building and the Health Sciences Building.   The Percent-for-Art Program, administered by the List Visual Arts Center, allots money to commission art for each new building project or major renovation.   The program was formally instituted in 1968, but earlier collaborations between artists and architects can be found on the Institute's campus.   Other Percent-for-Art works include Dan Graham's Yin/Yang Pavilion in Simmons Hall and Sarah Sze's recently installed Blue Poles in Sidney-Pacific Graduate Residence.   Publicly sited art also include sculptures by Alexander Calder, Henry Moore, and Pablo Picasso.

The Dean's Gallery is showcasing original architectural drawings for the plaza by artist Richard Fleischner.   This space, completed in 1985, includes pavers, benches, and landscaping.   A total of 18 drawings are presented at the Dean's Gallery; among them are two rendered perspective drawings and four cyanotypes.   Cyanotype is a monochrome photographic print process that results in a cyan-blue print.   Most of the drawings were done with graphite on vellum and yellow tracing paper; these materials allowed the artist to work on different parts of the layout plan (such as the stairs and the benches alone), and layer them to examine the design as a whole.   The series of drawings and studies offer different variations on ideas and demonstrate Fleischner's thinking process.

Richard Fleischner was born 1944 in New York and is based in Providence, Rhode Island.   As a sculptor, painter, installation artist, and furniture maker, Fleischner began working environmentally in the 1970s.   His sizeable body of work includes landscaping and large-scale public sculpture that emphasizes the relationship of man-made architecture and the natural world.   For him, elements of nature serve as sculptural media.   Fleischner has used hay, sod, grass, and wooden structures to create universal architectural forms in a variety of natural settings.   The maze, the corridor, the box, and the field are all cultural elements that have figured in Fleischner's work; these elements are utilized in combination with, and in contrast to, features in the natural environment such as trees, hills, sod, and other plants.   His style tends towards the low-key and minimal, but he also draws inspiration from his knowledge of historical monumental sites, such as the Egyptian pyramids and Greek temples.   The winner of numerous honors including three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, Fleischner has created and shown his work all over the world.

[Press Release]

All images are protected by copyright law and thus cannot be reproduced or altered without the expressed, written permission of the artists.