On October
23, 1995, three teams will start out from San Diego in travel
trailers designed by artist Andrea Zittel and travel to
the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). Each team
has customized its trailer and will take a different route,
adding to the trailer as they go. The Trailers wilI be exhibited
at the Museum as Andrea Zittel: New Work from November 9,
1995 to February 4, 1996. Andrea Zittel. has written a profile
describing each team as follows:
Todd and Kristen Kimmell
Todd and Kristen Kimmell are the creators of Lost Highways,
The Classic Trailer and Motorhome Club and the producers
s of the Lost Highway Quarterly. Kristen is an art teacher
and Todd describes himself as a "semi-retired junk man who
now runs a moving company." Baby Thornton was born August
16. The Kimnells will be using their A-Z Travel Trailer
to explore, among other areas, Palm Springs. As Todd explains,
many of the totally outrageous, one-off trailer designs
produced to impress crowds at 1940s and 1950s trailer shows
somehow wound up in Palm Springs, . . but for Todd and Kristen
"from A to point B is never a straight line."
Todd and Kristen's trailer customized functions include
many "classic" trailer elements and many wonderful wacky
touches. The trailer will even feature a special baby-changing
unit.
Miriam and Gordon Zittel
Miriam and Gordon, my parents, are retired school teachers
who live on their 31 1/2-foot sail boat. We think that this
makes them the perfect candidates to assess the conveniences
of 12 feet on dry land. In mid-November, after completing
their A-Z Travel Trailer Tour, they will set sail on their
boat heading toward Mexico and the South Pacific with no
particular return date in mind.
Miriam and Gordon Zittel will use their A-Z Travel Trailer
to retrace their honeymoon drive up Highway 1 along the
coastline of California. The trailer customizations by the
Zittels will include features that they find handy aboard
their boat. The overall aesthetic of course will reflect
their love of the ocean and their anticipation of southern
tropical coastlines.
Andrea Zittel and Charlie White
Charlie White is an artist who grew up in Philadelphia
and will be moving out west in January.. . I grew up in
Southern California and moved east seven years ago. We both
experience the liberation and the restrictions resulting
from our own mobile lifestyles.
Our main destination will be the Biosphere in Arizona...
this experiment combines both the scenario of the most radical
change with a simultaneous necessity to create perpetual
consistency. Our trailer additions will provide a fairly
curvy lounge area, somehow inspired by the idea of an interior
landscape and by a diorama we saw this summer at the Natural
History Museum in Berlin.
Exhibition Organization and Sponsorship
Andrea Zittel: New Work is organized by Gary Garrels, SFMOMA
Elise S. Haas chief curator and curator of paining and sculpture.
The exhibition is generously supported by the Collectors
Forum of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
ANDREA ZITTEL TAKES HER INNOVATIVE LIVING SPACES ON THE
ROAD BEFORE PARKING AT SFMOMA
A highly unusual project by Andrea Zittel will be the subject
of the San Francisco Museum of Modem Art (SFMOMA's) New
Work series, on view from November 9, 1995 to February 4,
1996. Zittel has drawn significant attention with her "living
spaces." These all-in-one units Offer a greatly simplified
liberating alternative to the complexities of contemporary
life, and, at the same time, encourage a high degree of
individualism. Zittel draws on the traditions of early twentieth-century
modernism, especially as interpreted through the Bauhaus-artists
who sought to improve the quality of life through designed
environments and links these traditions with a distinct
American attitude and aesthetic. In this case, Zittel has
chosen the quintessentially American phenomenon of mobile
communities as the focus of her work, The living spaces
that she will present at SFMOMA are three travel trailers,
designed by Zittel, but which will be customized by three
couples who will each drive a different route from San Diego
to San Francisco.
"Andrea Zittel is an artist who synthesizes disparate sources
from high modernism and American vernacular culture, giving
renewed vigor and fresh vision to both," stated SFMOMA Elise
S. Haas Chief Curator and Curator of Painting and Sculpture
Gary Garrels, "Throughout the 2Oth century, artists have
time and again tried to break down the barriers between
art and life, with episodic success. As we near the end
of this century, Zittel has re-engaged romantic yearning
with down-to-earth American pragmatism, offering new ideas
for both art and life."
Andrea Zittel was born in Escondido, California. She attended
San Diego State University, where at the urging of her parents,
she intended to study business, but after taking one art
class, switched her major to painting- She received a BFA
in painting/sculpture at San Diego in 1988 and then an MFA
in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1990,
before moving to New York, where she now lives and works.
She was recently the recipient of a DAAD Fellowship for
a year-long work residency in Berlin.
In one of Zittel's first major projects she explored the
relationship between creation and possession. In this case,
she was creating live chickens in carefully controlled "Breeding
Units"; in the artist's words, "Breeding is the ultimate
form of ownership: the property is life." The Breeding Unit
for Reassigning Flight encouraged the reproduction of chickens
with the strongest wings-those that could reach the highest
nests in the unit. Similarly, the Breeding Unit for Averaging
Eight Breeds, which was exhibited at the Venice Biennale
in 1993, induced cross fertilization with a goal of creating
offspring with only dominant traits, closer to a "natural"
chicken than its progenitors.
The next units created by Zittel signified the antithesis
of possession The "Living Units", created for humans, and
produced by her (fictional) conceptual organization A-Z
Administration, reduced everything necessary for life into
a simple compact system-place to eat, place to sleep, a
place to socialize, minimal areas for storage-and nothing
more. As opposed to the "engineered life" of the "Breeding
Unit," the "Living Units" engineer freedom through structure.
Similarly Zittel has attempted to reduce the complications
of dressing by designing simple outfits that could be worn
daily (owners have multiple copies of each outfit)--one
for warmer weather and one for cooler.
The A-Z Travel Trailer Units that will be shown at SFMOMA
offer a new twist on the "Living Unit theme. Writes Zittel,
they "feature all of the design qualities A-Z has become
renowned for: comfort, luxury, and flexibility.. . .The
A-Z Travel Trailer is part of a tradition, and the tradition
of structuring man's living environment has an interesting
and diverse history. From the Bauhaus to Corbusier. . .
from the tract home to the RV . . . we can trace a common
effort to creating living structures in order to influence
and model our lives. While CorbusierÍs "machines for living"
were inspired by scientific rationalism, the history of
travel trailers began in the families backyard. Architecture
and design are the arenas of experts, house trailers are
the medium of enthusiasts. We here at A-Z recognize the
common need for liberty with an intimate and controllable
universe as the unifying tradition among these diverse projects." |