Intervention by Andrés Jaque, on this icon of architecture, is actually an art-performance which dialogues to the current rebuilding of the pavilion by Ignasi de Sola Morales, Cristian Cirici and Fernando Ramos to recover the Germany pavilion built in the Universal Exhibition of 1929, in Barcelona. Andrés Jaque when to know that the podium on which it sits the pavilion is hollow, interprets this space as a second floor, it is a space with little more than 2.00 m high warehouse serving utensils for maintenance of pavilion.
Andrés Jaque, again demonstrates how fragile memory is and how easy it is to forget the reality. The rebuilding of 1992 was one of the best reconstructions that have been made of a building and if we talk about contemporary architecture more. The work done by Ignasi de Sola Morales, Cristian Cirici and Fernando Ramos, was profusely thorough, detailed and rigorous (there is good GG 1993 publication showing the reconstruction work, with plans, sections and photographs, where you can see all building structure). The published about the pavilion could fill a library and between the texts that study and analyze I remember "The horror vitrified" by Josep Quetglas.
In the reconstruction of pavilion appeared the physical ghosts from the built by Mies in 1929. Many have been the architects or researchers who discovered "ghosts" about meanings of the pavilion. From the interpretation of shadows cast by the Ionic columns in front of the pavilion by Josep Quetglas, to the colors of the German flag made of materials (curtains, carpet and onyx) as explain Andrés Martínez from Paco Alonso, now, Andrés Jaque performed his own interpretation about these spaces and show us it as the representation of a political and social agreement.
The Phantom installation consists of all those elements, objects, and materials that have contributed – and still contribute- to rebuilding and maintaining Mies’ unaltered image, thus revealing the agreements, pacts and controversies that have influenced the way we think about him and the Pavilion. The installation explores the web of relationships hidden behind the fetishist myth of Mies as a solitary genius. By revisiting the frozen moment of the opening of the Pavilion in 1929, this intervention will – like the phantom of the Pavilion past – temporarily bring to light the Pavilion’s unseen context: the web of people, technologies and institutions that made it possible. From this perspective, the Barcelona Pavilion can be seen as a social construction, participated in and discussed by productive, technological and civil institutions.
Venue: Phantom. Mies as Rendered Society. Pavilion Mies van der Rohe. Barcelona.
Dates: From December 13, 2012 to February 28, 2013.
