Jorge Otero-Pailos, The Ethics of Dust, 2009

Anthony Vidler

“How do we define, and thereby ensure the individual integrity of each art as a practice when there no longer seems to be any division between the spatial and the textual, or more problematically in the case of sculpture and architecture , between the aesthetically constructed spatial and the functionally constructed spatial?”


“ When artists like Vito Acconci are experimenting with architecture and architects like Frank Gehry seem as preoccupied with the sculptural form of building as with its functional role, it seems that what Rosalind Krauss once termed the “expanded field” of sculpture as involved architecture, or, as the experimental constructions of Dan Graham and others demonstrate, architecture has invaded sculpture.”


“This ambiguity has been present at least since the 1960’s when it was equally possible to see Dan Graham taking his inspiration from architectural theory and practice as it was to see Louis I. Kahn constructing a “minimalist” aesthetic akin to that developed by Donald Judd and his peers. But with the current exploration of digital form common to the architecture of Frank Ghery and his younger contemporaries and to sculptors like Richard Serra, the distinction seems to have come to rest in the narrow territory of “use” versus “uselessness”.

Anthony Vidler. Architecture's expanded field  in: Anthony Vidler, ed., Architecture between spectacle and use, Williamstown, Mass. : Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute ; New Haven : Distributed by Yale University Press, 2008.


The image is from: Haus-Rucker-Co live again : Lentos-Kunstmuseum Linz, 16.11.2007 - 16.03.2008 / Ausstellung und Katalog Andrea Bina.