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“To make noise” – William Alsop (Great Britain)

April 3, 2014 - June 7, 2014

ART & SPACE Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition of art works by the acclaimed British architect and artist William Alsop.
This will be the first exhibition of William Alsop in Germany with the ART & SPACE Gallery.

Peacock, 2012, Acrylic on paper, 120x150cm

The artist will be present for the
opening reception on Thursday
April 3, 6:30-10:00pm.
ART & SPACE GALLERY,
Herrnstrasse 13, Munich
The show is on view April 3 – June 7, 2014

Opening speech – by Dr. Eva Karcher.
While his work is often described as avant-garde, colourful and risk-taking, Alsop does not adhere to any style or school. ‘Style, like fashion, goes out of fashion,’ he says.

With their unusual forms and colours, his architecture designs have an immediacy and spontaneity which comes from their origins in art practice. For Will painting is an integral part of designing, helping to discover and explore the ideas which become forms. Function and construction may not exactly be afterthoughts, but their relationship to form is mediated through two processes which were not part of modernist practice. Recent advances in digital technology have helped to make it possible to build shapes which could not have been constructed with traditional means, a capability which has allowed architecture to transcend its traditional relationship with construction.
The Guardian, October 2006

The current exhibition brings together his recent works on paper and large-scale acid-bright canvases, discovering the idea of how sculptural and fantastically vibrant Will Alsop’s art works are. The subjects of his paintings reveal his impish humor and his turn toward the fantastic. Watching at his artworks, one keeps thinking about his architecture, while being inside his architecture, you have his art in front. Playfully abstract and flamboyantly colourful works are full of wit and childish humour, turning the significance of his professional activity into a joyful play.

“His architecture has always looked like sculptural painting,” said Tom Bloxham, the chairman of Urban Splash, a developer for whom Alsop has designed several schemes. “It was always big swirls of the brush and big gestures.”
The Guardian, August 2009

William Alsop was born in 1947, Northampton. Today, Alsop is Principal of multidisciplinary firm ALL Design, based in Battersea, London.
Famed for his boldly engineered buildings and colourful approach to design, Alsop has worked extensively across the UK and internationally with major projects in Toronto, Marseille, Hamburg, New York and Asia. He took his degree in the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, in 1973. He has been continuously practicing architecture, painting, drawing and sculpture since his youth.

William Alsop has been in Royal Academy of Arts in London since 2000, an annus mirabilis (a year of miracle) in which he also won the Stirling Prize for architecture for his Peckham Library and exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale. He loves being an RA because it allows him to combine his artistic and architectural sides. ‘I have wanted to be an architect since before I knew what an architect was. But I enjoy submitting work to the Summer Exhibition and having it shown in the painting galleries.’

William Alsop’s work has been featured in major museum exhibitions such as annual Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions, London; Proper Behaviour in the Park, Royal Academy of Arts; Groundswell, MoMA, New York; Middlehaven Masterplan, 9th Venice Biennale 2004; All Barnsley Might Dream, 8th Venice Biennale, 2002; Beauty, Joy & the Real, Sir John Soane Museum, London, 2002; 7th Venice Biennale, 2000
and many others around Europe.

In June 2009 the well-known American publication Fast Company put Will Alsop in first place among the ten greatest architects universally known for their creative, innovative approach.

William Alsop is a Professor at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) , London, from 2013; a Professor at the Technical University of Vienna; he was appointed Distinguished Visiting Practitioner by the Ryerson University, Toronto, in 2009. For several years he was a tutor of sculpture at the Central St Martin’s College of Art & Design in London and was Visiting Professor at institutions including the University of Hanover, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and the San Francisco Institute of Art. In January 2011 Will Alsop carried out a collaborative project between the Ontario College of Art and Design University of Toronto (OCADU) and the Royal Academy of Art, London; He was elected as a Royal Academician Architect at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2000.

Selected Exhibitions

2013 – Passion From A Falcon Eye, Will Alsop; Indar Pasricha Fine Arts, London

2013 – Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London

2012 – Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London

2011 – Proper Behaviour in the Park, Royal Academy of Arts, London 2009 – South Kensington and Chelsea Mental Health Centre, Nightingale Place, London

2007 – Towards…, Chelsea Space, London

2007 – Jack in the Box, Finland

2007 – Bradford, MoMA New York

2007 – Future City, The Barbican, London

2007 – Cultural Fog, Olga Korper Gallery, Toronto

2007 – Bathing Beauties, The Hub:National Centre for Craft & Design, Lincolnshire

2007 – Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London

2007 – Creative Prisons, Touring exhibition

2005 – Supercities, Urbis, Manchester

2005 – Groundswell; MoMA, New York City

2005 – Picture a City, Bradford Masterplan film by Squint Opera

2004 – Middlehaven Masterplan, Venice Biennale