Iván Navarro

The artist selected the series of skyscrapers, many of which have landmark status, for their appealing visual plans. Surrender (Flatiron) was built in 1902 in New York City in the style of the Chicago School. (Recall Edward Steichen’s photographs of the Flatiron of 1904, famous images of the twenty-two story building.) The building’s triangular plan was an innovative solution to the awkward site at the intersection of Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Untitled (Empire State), perhaps the most iconic tall building in the world, is designed by adapting the perimeters of four floor plans within the space of 57 x 119 x 10 inches. Quite a feat!

Another stunning sculpture is Decay (Lake Point Tower) in Chicago, which was built in 1968 in the international style by architects who were students of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, world famous for his minimalist glass and steel buildings. (Although this is Navarro’s first reference to Mies, the artist paid homage in Black Electric Chair of 2006 to another great modernist architect, Marcel Breuer, who designed in 1925 the first tubular steel chair, known as the Wassily chair.) Lake Point Tower’s silhouette, reminiscent of a tripod, is the only tall building today in Chicago east of Lake Shore Drive, an avenue lined with tall buildings. Untitled (Twin Towers) are identically shaped rectilinear floor sculptures that conform to the perimeters of the floor plans of Tower 1 and Tower 2. If the spectator looks down into the beaming neon lights, the plunging depths feel very unsettling.

Navarro has always been interested in objects for their potential as social sculpture. Recall the artist’s doors, chairs, tables, and ladders. The Armory Fence at the Armory Fair in New York occupied approximately 750 square feet, and while it attracted a lion’s share of public attention, it was conceptually similar to the fictitious tall buildings. The fence impels one to reconsider his/her relationship to the flow of space and the dynamics of place. In the same way that one cannot enter the illusionistic space of the skyscrapers, one cannot enter the real space of an art gallery, even more so because the gallery is the fence! All the sculpture, both on and off site, challenges one’s inclination to enter familiar spatial constructs that, in reality, can only be imagined.