Primitives is an installation that combines the romantic tradition of ruined landscapes with modular fractals. First realized across the entry of the Venice Biennale in 2010, it is comprised of loosely dispersed furniture elements that appear like rock piles, each one unique but formed from the same universal building block. Like microcosms in the distance, the clusters are imagined as islands falling apart and building back up, organizing and eroding at once.
The Primitive arrangements can be sat on, leaned against, held in your arms. The space is used to hold a series of conversations during the Biennale organized by arts organization TBA-21. It is more of a cave than an auditorium. The informality implicit in an ordering system is more important than expressing its strict composure. Multiple pursuits come together here—the quasicrystal, the fractal, the single building element, the landscape object—to make something atomized, frayed and open.
