Filed under: Art
Last Wednesday a few people from my office decided to head down to Bregenz, Austria after work to check out an art exhibition by Richard Serra. It was in the Kunsthaus which was designed by architect Peter Zumthor and it is basically a layered glass box. But in order to get there we had to take a personal car since the office cars were both broke down. So 5 of us hopped (see: squished) into Ingo’s little two-door Twingo. There’s nothing better than flying down the German autobahn in a Twingo with the sun roof wide open. No, not really.
I hadn’t been to Bregenz yet and so it was nice to get a glimpse of it. It was a total mix of traditional Austrian architecture with the pitched roofs and painted details and modern flat roof-style with simple detailing and materials. I wish I hadn’t left my camera in the car when we went walking around!
The art museum itself had exquisite glass panels on the building that overlapped in a cool way, held on my a very nice steel structure. The inside has great proportions, perfectly even diffused lighting and some of the best concrete work I’ve ever seen….touching it was like touching silk. I ran my hand along the wall as I walked up each staircase.
The exhibition was a series of drawings (more like sculptural paintings) done by an artist who is more known for his sculpture work. He does amazing things with corten steel. But these series were mostly done by exploring different ways paint stick can be melted down and applied to surfaces in actually very sculptural ways. The audio guides we got had the whole thing narrated by the artist himself which was pretty neat (despite his moments of sounding a bit crazy). And he explained the techniques he used on all his pieces and how he progressed through the different series displayed on each floor. I’ll write more on the actual exhibit and the gallery space in a future post.
Afterwards we headed over to the Viva Mexican Cantina just down the street where we met up with a couple other colleagues. It wasn’t bad food, I guess it was the best I’ve had outside of Spain, but I sure can’t wait to taste real Mexican food again and especially have real chips. The only corn chips in Europe are like the lowest quality bag you could buy in Safeway but they they will charge ridiculous prices for it because they are so expensive to get here. One small bag (not much bigger than a grab bag in the US) at the grocery store here is over 3 euro! The place was packed though and we all decided we should open up a decent Mexican restaurant in Europe as a retirement plan because we’d make a fortune. I can’t tell my friends in Mexico that I spent 12 euro on one enchilada (unlike the place of three usually served in Mexico) and it didn’t even come with rice and beans!
After our meal, we headed back over to check out the museum all lit up. It looked like a glowing ice cube. But the best part was being able to see the floor plates behind the glass and the staircase. But when you are inside, you have no idea that you are inside a glass box. Definitely a cool building.
Then it was back in the Twingo for the couple hour drive back to the Überlingen.
