USC alumni steals the spotlight at LACMA

Frank Gehry, a 1954 graduate of USC, currently has an exhibit on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The exhibition captured the life’s work of the influential and acclaimed architect.

There were seven different galleries, each pertaining to a specific epoch of his career. The first gallery, De-composition | Segmentation, focused on Gehry’s work from 1965-1980. Gehry was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1929 and later began his career as an architect in Los Angeles. His obsession with architecture led him to create some of the most ambitious designs, landing him the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989. Since receiving this award, Gehry’s work has continued to grow. A rebellious renegade, Gehry has revolutionized architecture.

After opening his office in Santa Monica in 1962, Gehry began his career designing projects for developers and urban-planning agencies. Using his knowledge of construction, Gehry reinvented the idea of the architectural object. It was surreal to see the stages of Gehry’s projects through the progression of his sketches and through the final model structures. Starting with simple line and shape, the sketches thereafter gained dimension, perspective and style. His sketches showed every nimble movement of his hand. If standing close enough, you could see the marks he erased and meticulously redrew. He sometimes wrote down words on sketches, which offered insight into his structural ideas for the buildings. On one of his final sketches of the Spiller Residence, in Venice, Calif., were the words “tunnel for ocean view?” After gaping at the transformational sketches and the model structures, the final projection of the projects were captivating.

The second gallery, Composition | Assemblage, was a collection of Gehry’s work from 1980-1990. At this stage in his career, Gehry began to create discrete, heterogeneous structures, as he was influenced by the concept of a “one-room building.” Gehry’s practice of creating model structures increased in his more intricate designs and use of materials. He used conventional materials in unconventional ways, which no architect had done before. For example, he used a stack of flat cardboard boxes to represent mountains on which the residences stood. The cardboard, so meticulously carved and manipulated, looked close to the real thing.

His work done between 1990-2000 was split into two different galleries: Interaction | Fusion and Conflict | Tension. In the Interaction | Fusion gallery, Gehry revived the principle of continuity in his structures, as was evident in his design for the Lewis Residence, in which he combined structure, material, envelope and ornament through the creation of a stainless steel roof made out of fabric dipped in wax. Gehry also began to use the new software system, CATIA (Computer Aided Three-Dimensional Interactive Application), to accurately produce his architecture. In the Conflict | Tension gallery, Gehry’s fascination with tension and attraction was evident in his work. His structures contained contradiction, clashes, abrupt changes and conflicts — echoing the heterogenous nature of the city.

At the turn of the century, Gehry began two new enterprises, illustrated in the Flux | Continuity gallery, which features his work on from 2000-2010, and the Unity | Singularity gallery, from 2000-2015. In the early 2000s, Gehry began to explore metallic materials. His interest in continuous metallic structures was put into work in his construction of Chicago’s Millennium Park and New York’s Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. After, Gehry questioned the identity of the architectural object. He simplified chaotic forms, and unified them into beautiful structures. His work has resulted in iconic buildings, such as the Üstra Office Building in Germany and the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.

The last gallery, In The Studio Now, was breathtaking. Gehry’s current projects encompass the diversity of all his past projects. Among the projects were private residences, concert halls, corporate headquarters and art museums.  Mesmerized by the bold colors and intricate shapes, this gallery distinguished itself from the others as the most advanced in design. On the back wall of this gallery was a giant panoramic image of his office, in which his assistants are pictured working on the projects present in the gallery.

In addition to the galleries containing his work, there was a showing of Sketches of Frank Gehry, the 2006 documentary about Gehry’s work. After sitting through the entire one hour and 24 minutes of the documentary, the exhibit looked incredibly different. Revisiting sketches and models with Gehry’s vision in mind, the miniscule details now seemed so apparent. As the documentary continued to play on a loop, Gehry’s voice echoed throughout Resnick Pavilion, giving the illusion of his presence. However, Gehry did not need to be present for his vision to come through in his work. His architecture, so idiosyncratic in nature, spoke for itself.

Gehry’s honesty resonated with me. “I’m always scared that I’m not gonna know what to do. It’s a terrifying moment. And then when I start, I’m always amazed. So, that wasn’t so bad,” Gehry said in his documentary.

Frank Gehry will be speaking on Wednesday at LACMA. There is a 6 p.m. reception, 6:45 p.m. talk and 7:30 p.m. exhibit.

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that the Frank Gehry exhibit is on display at the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art. It is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The Daily Trojan regrets the error.