Bell pavilion by Christian Boltanski and Pezo von Ellrichshausen

Pezo von Ellrichshausen is an art and architecture studio founded in 2002 by Mauricio Pezo (b. Renaico, Chile, 1973) ) and Sofia von Ellrichshausen (b. Bariloche, Argentina, 1976). They live and work in southern Chile, on a farm at the foot of the Andes Mountains.

They are Professor of the Practice at AAP Cornell University in New York and have been Visiting Professors at the GSD Harvard University, the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, the University of Texas in Austin, the Porto Academy and the Universidad Catolica de Chile.

Their work has been exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the MAXXI in Rome and as part of the Permanent Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  They have been invited to the Venice Biennale International Architecture Exhibition (2010, 2016), where they also were the curators for the Chilean Pavilion in 2008.

Among other venues, they have lectured at MIT, Princeton University, Columbia University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Architecture League of New York, the Tate Modern, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Alvar Aalto Symposium and the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Their work has been distinguished with the Mies Crown Hall Americas Emerge Prize by the IIT, the Rice Design Alliance Prize, the Iberoamerican Architecture Biennial Award and the Chilean Architecture Biennial Award.

The work of the studio has been widely published and edited in monographic issues of El Croquis, AV in Madrid, A+U in Tokyo, 2G in Barcelona and in the essay books Spatial Structure (B Architecture publisher) and Naïve Intention (Actar).

Mauricio Pezo (b. 1973) completed a Master in Architecture at the Universidad Catolica and a degree in Architecture at the Universidad del Bio-Bio. He has been awarded the Young Architect Prize by the Chilean Architects Association and the Municipal Art Prize by the Concepcion City Hall.

Sofia von Ellrichshausen (b. 1976) holds a degree in Architecture from the Universidad de Buenos Aires where she was distinguished with the FADU- UBA Honours Diploma. She was the president of the jury at the Venice Biennale International Architecture Exhibition (2018).

Christian Boltanski (Paris, September 6, 1944) is a French sculptor, photographer, painter and film maker, most well known for his photography installations and contemporary French Conceptual style. Boltanski began creating art in the late 1950s, but didn't rise to prominence until almost a decade later through a few short, avante-garde films and some published notebooks in which he referenced his childhood.

In 1986, Boltanski began creating mixed media/materials installations with light as essential concept. Tin boxes, altar-like construction of framed and manipulated photographs (e.g. Chases School, 1986–1987), photographs of Jewish schoolchildren taken in Vienna in 1931, used as a forceful reminder of mass murder of Jews by the Nazis, all those elements and materials used in his work are used in order to represent deep contemplation regarding reconstruction of past. While creating Reserve (exhibition at Basel, Museum Gegenwartskunst, 1989), Boltanski filled rooms and corridors with worn clothing items as a way of inciting profound sensation of human tragedy at concentration camps. As in his previous works, objects serve as relentless reminders of human experience and suffering. His piece, Monument (Odessa), uses six photographs of Jewish students in 1939 and lights to resemble Yahrzeit candles to honor and remember the dead. "My work is about the fact of dying, but it's not about the Holocaust itself."

Additionally, his enormous installation titled "No Man's Land" (2010) at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, is a great example of how his constructions and installations trace the lives of the lost and forgotten.

Christian Boltanski has participated in over 150 art exhibitions throughout the world.[7] Among others, he had solo exhibitions at the New Museum (1988), the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Magasin 3 in Stockholm, the La Maison Rouge gallery, Institut Mathildenhöhe, the Kewenig Galerie, The Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme and many others. From 1 July to 25 September 2011, museum Es Baluard (Mallorca, Spain) exhibited "Signatures", the installation Christian Boltanski conceived specifically for Es Baluard and which is focused on the memory of the workers who in the 17th Century built the museum's walls.

In 2002, Boltanski made the installation "Totentanz II", a Shadow Installation with copper figures, for the underground Centre for International Light Art (CILA) in Unna, Germany.
Prizes

    2007 billionéateurs sans frontières award for visual arts by Cultures France
    2007 Praemium Imperiale Award by the Japan Art Association[8]
    2001 Goslarer Kaiserring, Goslar, Germany[8]
    2001 Kunstpreis, given by Nord/LB, Braunschweig, Germany[8]