Until recently, Baan was best known for his unique images of major building projects by such renowned architecture firms as OMA / Rem Koolhaas, Herzog & de Meuron, SANAA, Steven Holl, Morphosis, Zaha Hadid, Toyo Ito, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, among others. More recently, he came to prominence through his award-winning photographs of the Torre David, an abandoned skyscraper project in Caracas, Venezuela that has been adaptively colonized by local residents in an accidental study of urban utopic living.
Perry Rubenstein Gallery announces representation of Iwan Baan in his artistic practice. Baan’s work exists at a critical juncture between architectural photography and sociocultural inquiry at a time when urbanization is a driving force behind human evolution.
The City and the Storm is a centerpiece in Perry Rubenstein Gallery’s exhibition The Way We Live that will feature captivating large-scale images of Baan’s singular vision encompassing urban, architectural and home environments. Baan’s artistic practice examines how we live and interact with architecture, focusing on the human element, which brings buildings, intersections, and public gathering places to life. Baan’s images examine the choices we make through construction and building, whether it be to section off tracts of impoverished urban sprawl with massive traffic interchanges, reintegrate purposeful gathering areas into large-scale public buildings, or live in housing that stretches the boundaries of how a community functions. In his work, Baan’s startling images conjure the artistic realm of artists like Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, and Thomas Struth.
Venue: Perry Rubenstein Gallery. 1215 N. Highland Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90038. USA.
Dates: Gallery Hours: 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM, Tuesday-Saturday. It will be closed for the holidays from December 22, 2012 through January 1, 2013.
Iwan Baan’s work was recently included in the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition, Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement, and in the Carnegie Museum of Art’s, White Cube, Green Maze: New Art Landscapes. The artist’s work has regularly appeared in major publications such as the New York Times, New York magazine, Domus, Abitare, and the New Yorker, among others. In 2011, he was named one of the most influential people in the contemporary architecture world by Il Magazin dell’Architettura. On the occasion of Julius Shulman’s 100th Birthday, Baan was honored as the inaugural recipient of the prestigious Julius Shulman Institute Photography Award. In 2012, Baan, along with Urban-Think Tank (Alfredo Brillembourg, Hubert Klumpner), and Justin McGuirk, won the Golden Lion at the International Architecture Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia for the project Torre David, that was exhibited at Corderie, Arsenale.
