AD—WO: Groundwork and Jon Lott / Para Project: Bivouac for Models

On June 10 from 1–3pm Art Omi will unveil new installations by AD—WO and Jon Lott / Para Project in the Sculpture and Architecture Park. The commissioned works bring to the forefront the layered complexities of architecture, through time, place, process, and perspective. 

AD—WO: Groundwork
Annually, the freeze-thaw cycles on the site of Groundwork push boulders and stone to the surface of the earth: animist refusals of the Enclosures that partition our lives. Groundwork moves in concert with these shifts and rotations; suspended between the material histories embedded in the ground and the immaterial practices inherited by generations of Indigenous stewards. The rituals of tending to the ground make this place home.

The installation is composed of two intersecting forms. A slightly irregular square is composed of tightly packed local stone, the same stone used by the Stockbridge‐Munsee Community Band of Mohicans to shape cairns and walls into local ceremonial markers and waypoints. The second form is a shadow, inscribed by a dark patch of flowers and grasses. Over the course of a year, the planting transforms from dormant and invisible to vibrant and immersive.

AD—WO is an art and architecture practice based in New York City, and by extension, between Melbourne and Addis Ababa. The practice examines how space is imaged and valued through art, design, and curatorial interventions. Founded in 2015 by Jen Wood and Emanuel Admassu, AD—WO has undertaken projects in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Germany, Italy, and the United States. Their work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2021), Architekturmuseum der TU München (2018), and Studio Museum in Harlem (2017). AD—WO’s work is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the High Museum of Art (Atlanta). 

Jon Lott / Para Project: Bivouac for Models
Bivouac for Models is a pairing of model-scale and full-scale architectures. Taking its title from the “bivouac”—the French term for a makeshift structure made of branches, leaves, and ferns often fashioned by soldiers taking shelter from the elements overnight during prolonged battles—the building acts as a shelter for a small-scale model of a similar Jon Lott / Para Project design. Tucked into a wooded section of Art Omi’s grounds, the building’s placement mirrors the bivouac, a temporary structure just over the tree line from a cleared section of forest. 

This intentional pairing of architectures of different sizes in Bivouac for Models highlights the scalar shifts which occur between different stages of the design process. By housing a model of an as-yet unrealized building, Bivouac for Models acts as a space where new modes of discourse and object making are sheltered from the corrosive forces of time and history to which they would otherwise be lost.

Para Project is a studio for architecture in Amenia, New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts, led by principal, Jon Lott. Each project is a collaborative effort between a wide range of constituents, guided by the specific needs and curiosities of diverse clientele. Para works on projects of varying scales and media: from cultural, institutional, and residential work, to events, and international competitions. Their work has been published in the New York Times, the LA Times, New York Magazine, Harvard Design Magazine, Architectural Record, Metropolis, Domus, the Architect’s Newspaper, a+u, Form, Azure, IW, Interior Design, MARK, Frame, Perspective, Surface, 306090, Exclama!, and in books American City X by Princeton Architectural Press (2014); Shopping Now by Taschen (2010); PROOF by Princeton Architectural Press; and How Architecture Learned to Speculate (2009).

About Art Omi
Art Omi is a not-for-profit arts center in New York’s Hudson Valley featuring over 60 large-scale works in nature throughout its 120-acre Sculpture & Architecture Park, contemporary art exhibitions in the Newmark Gallery, five residency programs hosting artists from around the world, and a thriving arts education program serving people of all ages and abilities. Art Omi is free to all, with grounds open every day, from dawn to dusk.