Madelon Vriesendorp: Cosmic Housework

The Jencks Foundation presents Cosmic Housework, a site-specific exhibition by Madelon Vriesendorp playfully responding to the various spaces and key themes of The Cosmic House, on view from September 12, 2023 to May 31, 2024.

Madelon Vriesendorp is a Dutch artist, sculptor and collector. A founding member of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), her graphics and anthropomorphic architectural paintings defined the visual identity of OMA in its early years. Her drawings and illustrations have been significantly influential for generations of architects ever since. Mainly based in London since 1976, Madelon has been working across a wide range of media on the expanded field of architecture, including costumes, built objects, paintings, murals, exhibition design, illustration, and short stories.

A long-time friend of Charles and Maggie Jencks, Madelon has been a frequent visitor to their home, The Cosmic House in Holland Park, which is one of the key landmarks in the development of Post-Modern architecture. A close collaborator to Charles, Madelon lent visual expression to many of his theories ranging from the “enigmatic signifiers” of Post-Modern architecture to landforms of his later landscape design. 

Switching between pop and classical culture, between high art and accessible kitsch, The Cosmic House became a built manifesto for the architecture that emerged in reaction to the slowly solidifying canon of Modernism as it faded in the late mid-century. Madelon has been invited by the Jencks Foundation to intervene in its spaces, addressing some common themes that span between her and Charles’ practice, such as language, irony, pop and ad-hoc.

Reinstating a dialogue between the worlds of Charles and Madelon, Cosmic Housework brings together already existing pieces with new site-specific commissions, offering a playful (re)interpretation and humorous subversion of the symbolism imbued in the architecture of The Cosmic House, densely packed with ideas and motifs embracing an entire cosmos of architectural allusion, history, metaphor and reference. Humour is central to the exhibition, echoing Madelon and Charles’s friendship that was voraciously productive for them both.

Madelon Vriesendorp said: “Housework is the work we do so that we can do our proper work. It is often done by women, and it’s often overlooked. At the same time that I was doing my artwork, I was helping Charles with his. Charles was a wonderful friend and I loved laughing with him and working on his gardens and other projects. He never downplayed my contribution. This exhibition features some of our drawing and thinking we did together. It was a delight.”

Eszter Steierhoffer, Director of the Jencks Foundation at The Cosmic House said: “The exhibition unfolds as a dialogue between two minds—friends and collaborators—with a shared sensibility that can be further traced through their historical collaborations, such as the iconic drawings for the cover of Charles’ ‘Story of Post-Modernism’ or the illustrations of the enigmatic signifiers, all testaments to Madelon Vriesendorp’s transformative talent in translating abstract architectural ideas into expressively powerful images. We are excited to present some of Madelon’s most recent body of work that lends new meaning to domestic materials otherwise seen as useless or unprecious, and which continue in the tradition of her previous work challenging established norms and the canon. Madelon’s humorous sculptures and installations are situated in conversation with The Cosmic House, which itself subverts the domestic and the banal through its use of irony and double coding.”

This exhibition is part of a series of artist commissions by the Jencks Foundation in response to the design of The Cosmic House and its embrace of polyphony and multitude of interpretations. 

*Image above: Photograph of Madelon Vriesendorp and Charles Jencks wearing the Cosmic Suit at The Cosmic House, with drawings of the design of the Cosmic Suit for Charles by Madelon, c. 2009.