The images above are of Terence Gower’s El Muro Rojo (Barragán), 2005, from the group exhibition Color Effects at Galerie Lelong in NYC last year.
From the artist’s website about the work-
A large black and white photograph of the roof patio of the Casa Barragán is mounted on an enormous red wall. The photograph is a copy of Armando Salas Portugal’s famous 1953 photograph (this time commissioned from architectural photographer Jorge del Olmo), and shows a corner of Luis Barragán’s roof patio with its famous coloured walls reduced to grey tones. The work separates a tonal and planar understanding of the architecture from the “emotional” encounter with colour that Barragán aspired to.
From his statement about his practice-
I work on a number of bodies of work at once, each developed over several years. In the past decade my work has focused on a critical re-reading of the modern movement and its utopian bent. A desire to reexamine the notion of progress—a term corrupted by the excesses of technological modernism—has fueled my research on the post-war period and has led to a search for models from the past that might still be relevant today.
Below is the Armando Salas Portugal color photograph referenced by Gower’s work.
Armando Salas Portugal, “Barragán House”, Mexico City, 1948. View of the roof terrace in the late 1960s. Image via Barragan Foundation
Armando Salas Portugal is known for his photographs of the Mexican countryside and the architecture of the city. He captured the work of several famous architects, in addition to Luis Barragán’s projects.
From Wikipedia about the influence of modernism on Barragán and his concept of “emotional architecture“-
Barragán visited Le Corbusier and became influenced by European modernism. The buildings he produced in the years after his return to Mexico show the typical clean lines of the Modernist movement. Nonetheless, according to Andrés Casillas (who worked with Barragán), he eventually became entirely convinced that the house should not be “a machine for living.” Opposed to functionalism, Barragán strove for an “emotional architecture” claiming that “any work of architecture which does not express serenity is a mistake.” Barragán used raw materials such as stone or wood. He combined them with an original and dramatic use of light, both natural and artificial; his preference for hidden light sources gives his interiors a particularly subtle and lyrical atmosphere.
