Pia Camil / Trix & Robert Haussmann: The Log-O-Rithmic Slide Rule

This summer, Nottingham Contemporary presents two exhibitions that take very different approaches to playful architecture—from a 50-year survey of Trix & Robert Haussmann’s subversive designs, to the large-scale textile installations of Mexico-based artist Pia Camil.

The Log-O-Rithmic Slide Rule: A Retrospective is the first UK survey of the work of the Swiss architects and designers Trix & Robert Haussmann. Their work spans buildings, product design and furniture, as well as textiles, poems and models. Bringing together works from the 1960s to today, the exhibition explores the husband-and-wife duo’s playful innovations and speculations. 

Embracing irony and ambiguity, artifice and illusion, the Haussmanns deal in what they have called “disturbed reality.” Often turning to historical models, they blend pop culture with techniques borrowed from 16th century mannerism, such as trompe l’oeil painting. Since founding their Zurich office in 1967, called the General Design Institute, the duo has realized some 650 projects across Europe, from Zurich’s railway station to interiors for bars and boutiques.

In the Haussmanns’ work, furniture often morphs or malfunctions, becoming enigmatic and hybrid. This exhibition brings together early pieces, such as modified chairs from the 1960s, with maquettes, fragmented columns, elements from shop displays and mirrored objects. The Haussmanns have described mirrors as a kind of “virtual reality,” saying: “with a mirror, you can destroy the real, enlarge it, change it.”

At Nottingham Contemporary, the kaleidoscopic exhibition design has been conceived by Caruso St John Architects (architects of our RIBA Award-winning building). The presentation also includes several interventions, from Liam Gillick, Karl Holmqvist and Petra Blaisse.

Alongside the Haussmanns, Nottingham Contemporary is presenting Pia Camil’s first solo exhibition in the UK. Titled Split Wall, the exhibition brings together a series of new commissions with existing work. The Mexico City-based artist’s practice explores the shortcomings of consumerism and globalisation, exposing the traces it leaves on our day-to-day and our built environment. Working with textiles, ceramics and video, Camil reconfigures these urban failures into works that are both playful and socially critical.

Conceived as an immersive installation across two of Nottingham Contemporary’s galleries, Camil’s exhibition features a series of textile works, forming spaces for communal interaction. A 100-metre-long curtain sewn from black and white t-shirts, titled Fade into Black (2018), will theatrically divide the exhibition, establishing a soft architecture that connects the body with the built environment. The work repurposes t-shirts that were originally manufactured in Mexico for export and then illicitly sold back to be resold in Mexican street markets. Camil will also be presenting a video produced in collaboration with writer Gabriela Jauregui, a usable hammock made from discarded jeans, and a series of ceramic masks.

The Log-O-Rithmic Slide Rule: A Retrospective is curated by Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen, supported by Caruso St John Architects and Tisca, and is a collaboration with KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. Split Wall is supported by Blum & Poe and Instituto De Visión.