Crane Arts LLC Philadelphia - Contemporary Arts Center In Philadelphia - Crane Building, Ice Box Project Space, Stable

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Scale Model, From Memory
Michael Grothusen

March 19 – April 13, 2008
Reception: April 10th 6pm-9pm
Location: The Gray Area
Hours: Wed-Fri, 12-6pm, Sat-Sun, 12-4pm

Scale Model, From Memory is rooted in a drawing project Michael Grothusen started while on an artists’ residency in the south of France in the early 1990’s. Dislocated from his usual studio he undertook a project where he attempted to draw, from memory, every house he ever lived in, including the location of doors, windows and the placement of furniture.

For the Grey Area at the Ice Box, he has built a half scale model of a house he lived in from 1973 to 1977, using the drawing, a few blurry family photographs and memory as sources. The work is an attempt to reconcile early spatial memories with a structure that conforms to architectural logic. Built in a plain spoken and matter of fact manner, the sculpture borrows equally from the language of new housing construction and early Minimalism.

Working from memory, I started by drawing a “free-hand” blue print for the earliest house that I remembered living in. I began with the house from 1970 when I was four-years old. I drew a rectangle to represent my bed, and from there I began estimating the spatial relationships of the other key elements of the room, the location of the doors and windows and large pieces of furniture. Once my bedroom was sketched in, I would then move on to estimating and remembering the shapes, proportions and locations of the other rooms in the house. Often I would have to erase and readjust walls, doors and windows to make the house have some kind or reasonable architectural logic. Once I had the house “roughed in” I then went back over the drawing and added details (written and drawn) about materials, textures, wall colors, objects and views out each window. In the end, the work consisted of about 15 drawings covering the houses and apartments that I lived in from 1970 to 1994.

The idea for the initial drawings exercise was rooted in the premise that the spaces we inhabit become part of our own personal psychological and aesthetic DNA. I wondered how it all adds up: looking out a window at an overly familiar view, staring at a certain color rug day in and day out, walking down the same hallway, tripping over the same furniture. I think that the day-in/day-out interaction with each space that we live in forms us in a way that is beneath the threshold of consciousness, but in the end contributes to who we are. The decision to select one and build a half scale model of it is an attempt to answer one of my favorite questions, ‘What was it like, really?” -From the artist’s statement.