Luma Arles Campus & Solaris Chronicles

23.04.2014

NEW ARTS RESOURCE BUILDING IN ARLES

DESIGNED BY FRANK GEHRY TO BREAK GROUND ON APRIL 5, 2014

New building will be centerpiece of 20-acre

LUMA arles arts campus

also featuring five historic industrial buildings

being revitalized by selldorf architects

LUMA Arles today announced that the groundbreaking ceremony for a new Arts Resource Center designed with Frank Gehry – the centrepiece of its 20-acre campus in Arles, France – will be held on 5 April 2014. The new building is being added to the site, home to a group of historic industrial buildings, five of which are being revitalised by Selldorf Architects. The first revitalised building, the 1 300 square-metre Atelier des Forges, will open in July 2014 to coincide with the annual international photography festival, the Rencontres d’Arles.

The new building, designed by Frank Gehry and scheduled to open in 2018, will house research and reference facilities, workshop and seminar rooms, and artist studios and presentation spaces. The building includes a 15 000 square-metre lower level (parking, archive and programming) and also the Arts Resource Center with its plaza-level, glass enclosed indoor-outdoor space which together total 9 000 square-metre.

LUMA Arles, which launched formally in 2013, is dedicated to providing artists with opportunities to experiment in the production of new work through inter­disciplinary collaboration. The conceptualisation of its mission, and the initial programming, has been spearheaded by Maja Hoffmann and a Core Team – which includes Tom Eccles, Liam Gillick, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Philippe Parreno and Beatrix Ruf, with seed money from the LUMA Foundation starting in 2008. Since that time, work by more than 100 artists has been commissioned and presented at sites throughout Arles, including the ancient Roman amphitheatre and the abandoned industrial site on which the LUMA Arles campus is being developed, which until 1984 served as manufacture and repair yards for the SNCF, the French national railway system.

In coordination with the groundbreaking, LUMA Arles will open Solaris Chronicles (5 April – 26 October 2014), a dynamic, collaborative exhibition examining the creative vision of Frank Gehry. A series of interventions, performances and projects will create an ever-changing mise-en-scene and, in turn, interact with the architect’s work. Participants include John Baldessari, Nicolas Becker and Djengo Hartlap, Pierre Boulez, Lucinda Childs, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Cai Guo Qiang, David Lynch, Greg Lynn, Philippe Parreno, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Tino Seghal and Rirkrit Tiravanija.

Curated by Liam Gillick, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno, Solaris Chronicles will revolve around large-scale models, selected by Gehry and Hoffmann, of a number of the architect’s seminal works - built, unbuilt and in development. These include Loyola Law School in LA, the forthcoming Facebook headquarters, Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Guggenheim Museum Abu Dhabi, the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and the National Art Museum in Beijing. This exhibition will be presented in the Atelier de la Mécanique located on the LUMA Arles campus.

LUMA Arles will be open throughout the construction period, and its programmes for new work, installations, and pre­sentations will continue both on-site and at locations throughout Arles.