Villes imaginaires et constructions fictives

Artists have always taken architecture seriously – the recent exhibition at the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum and at Caja Madrid on «painted architectures» prove it. Some of them have even been visionaries in the matter – we immediately think of Piranese or Robert Storr, a brut artist currently exhibited at the Baudoin pavilion in Paris. The present work shows that architecture and urban development have hardly ever inspired contemporary creators as much. He presents some one hundred of them, from Simon Bent to Erwin Wurm, including Bechtold, Boudvon and Op de Beeck, who use it as a permanent stimulus to their creativity. Using sand (Jenny Berntsson), computers, materials, cardboard or video cassettes (Mounir Fatmi), they rebuild or interpret a world that is - with its towers, high-rise blocks, its interchanges, its slums -, sprawling, impersonal, breathtaking… Is there still a place for the human being?

• Villes imaginaires et constructions fictives, directed by Robert Klanten and Lukas Feireiss, Thames & Hudson, 2012, 208 p., 45 €.