Exhibition

  • Alma Allen & Su Wu: Site Repair
    Jay Ezra Nayssan
    Curator
    The Eames House, Pacific Palisades
    Feb 26, 2024 to Apr 07, 2024
  • GRANTEE
    Del Vaz Projects
    GRANT YEAR
    2023

Alma Allen & Su Wu, “Site Repair,” 2024. Digital Rendering. Courtesy the artists, Del Vaz Projects, and the Eames Foundation

In A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander advocates for “site repair,” framing the intervention of architecture as potentially reparative rather than destructive: “We must treat every new act of building as an opportunity to mend some rent in the existing cloth.” This installation, Site Repair, emphasizes the site preserved by the Eames’ after a summer of picnicking in the meadow of Case Study House No. 8. Alma Allen and Su Wu, who are carefully building their own home in Tepotzlán, Mexico, present a material dialogue between these two households. Allen and Wu produce their first functional sculptural works together as a couple, engaging with the tree-lined meadow at the Eames House: seating, lighting, and surfaces for ceremonial gathering. Site Repair celebrates the integrity of the site as it exists, a conscious architectural integration within existing ecological and social systems, on the 75th anniversary of the Eames’ House.

Alma Allen lives and works between Mexico City and Tepoztlán, México. Allen’s sculptures simultaneously invite familiarity and examine the possibilities in pre-linguistic and extra-sentient communication. The forms carry a talismanic charge not only in their symbolic associations but also by their atmospheric expansiveness: bronze sculptures appear impossibly malleable, even liquid; wood and stone grain patterns are accented to highlight their natural history. Allen’s recent solo exhibitions include Nunca Solo, Museo Anahuacalli, Mexico City (2023); Some Eyes, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2023); Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (2023); Van Buuren Museum, Brussels (2021); and Kasmin Gallery, New York (2020). Group exhibitions include Intervención/Intersección at Rockefeller Center, New York (2022); Alma Allen & JB Blunk at Palm Springs Art Museum and the Whitney Biennial (2014). Alma’s work is included in the permanent collection of Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). An artist monograph was copublished by Rizzoli Electa, Kasmin, and Blum & Poe in 2020.

Su Wu lives and works between Mexico City and Tepoztlán, México. Wu is a writer and independent curator based in Mexico City, examining forms and concepts drawn from the history of art and design to investigate regimes of capability, utility, and the structural conditions that create the premise of need. Recent curatorial projects include Elementos Vitales: Ana Mendieta in Oaxaca (2021), the first presentation of the Cuban-American artist’s “Silueta” filmworks in Oaxaca, Mexico; and Intervención/Intersección (2022) with MASA at Rockefeller Center, New York. Wu is also an art editor for n+1, and her writing has appeared in numerous exhibition catalogues and periodicals. She is an ongoing consultant for the United States Department of State’s Art in Embassies program, where she authored the monograph for the permanent collection installed at NATO Headquarters, Brussels. Honors include the 2022 Nasher Prize Dialogue at the Nasher Sculpture Center, and a 2012 Getty Arts Writing Fellowship.

Jay Ezra Nayssan lives and works in Santa Monica. He is the founder and director of Del Vaz Projects, a nonprofit exhibition space run out of his home. Exhibitions at Del Vaz Projects have garnered significant critical praise in publications like Artforum, Los Angeles Times, Frieze, Flash Art, Mousse, and many others. As an independent curator, Nayssan has organized exhibitions for Frieze Los Angeles, Balice-Hertling, Paris; Galerie David Giroire, Paris; Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles, and M+B, Los Angeles.

The Charles and Ray Eames House Preservation Foundation, Inc. was established in 2004 to preserve and protect the Eames House and to provide educational experiences that celebrate the creative legacy of Charles and Ray Eames. It is a nonprofit organization officially recognized by the IRS as an organization described within the meaning of Section 501(c)(3) of the Code.

Del Vaz Projects, from the Farsi phrase dæst ō del bāz meaning open-handed and open-hearted, was founded in 2014 as an exhibition and curatorial platform centered around the domestic setting. Today, Del Vaz Projecs serves as a catalyst for both recognized and underrecognized artists by creating a thoughtful and profound discourse between artists' practices and architecture. Since 2021, Del Vaz Projects has been operating exclusively as an arts nonprofit within the meaning of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. As a curatorial platform, the organization provides opportunities to artists and the public through a variety of activities that include but are not limited to: exhibition programming; artist-stays; publications, public events, and workshops.