Have your Wedge & Eat it Too
The Wedge Gallery is an exhibition space at the Woodbury University School of Architecture that presents multiple shows every semester of work by students, faculty, as well as by invited architects and artists. Situated next to the central courtyard of the school, it showcases work in an informal and accessible setting, often becoming a gathering place for students. Among other university venues, the Wedge is a place where contemporary art and architecture can filter into the academic environment.
Answering a call for entries by the School of Architecture, Bojána and Donatella were selected for a joint curatorial position of the gallery for the Spring Season of 2014.
Our vision for the 2014 Spring series was to animate the Wedge Gallery by staging a series of workshops to produce the work exhibited in the gallery. Each show was conceived as living evidence of what had transpired in the galley with the active participation of students. To support this theme, invited architects and artists were asked to incorporate a student workshop into their conception of the exhibition. The workshop model reflects our ongoing interest in tools of production, as well as in architects and artists whose work we think is expressive of the love for the process, materials or logic used to create it. The spatial configuration of each show integrated visual, tactile and even olfactory experiences within the gallery space to provide an opportunity for a compelling dialogue among faculty, invited professionals and students on contemporary architectural practices and trajectories.
The 700 square foot, 12’ tall space has worked hard to contain the four exhibitions and two pop-up shows that were mounted during the 3.5 months of Bojána and Donatella’s curatorial tenure. For Claret-Cup, the gallery was a space for experimentation in all aspects of exhibition design from conception through content curation to the final installation. Each show tested the preeminence of the gallery wall as the primary site of exhibiting the work. On several occasions, the walls became sites for ephemeral food installations. The exhibitions fostered extensive collaboration between the gallery and the school’s Digital Fabrication Lab and Woodshop.