<em>R. Buckminster Fuller</em> Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe
on view June 26, 2008-September 21, 2008

R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was one of the great American visionaries of the 20th century. Best-known as the inventor of the geodesic dome, Fuller devoted much of his life to resolving the gap between the sciences and the humanities, which he believed was preventing society from taking a comprehensive view of the world. His theories and innovations traversed the worlds of architecture, visual art, literature, mathematics, molecular biology, and environmental science and have had a deep impact on all of those fields.


Boris Artzybasheff, R. Buckminster Fuller, 1963
Tempera on board, 21 1/2 x 17 in. (54.6 x 43.2 cm) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Time magazine
   
<em>Bang Bang Room</em> Paul McCarthy: Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement Three Installations, Two Films
on view June 26, 2008-October 12, 2008

This exhibition brings together a group of new and rarely seen works by Paul McCarthy (b. 1945), one of the most influential American artists of his generation. The show focuses on a core strand of McCarthy's work: the use of architecture to create perceptual disorientation in the viewer through spinning mirrors, rotating walls, projections, and altered space. In Bang Bang Room (1992), the space almost seems to come alive as the walls of a free-standing domestic room move slowly in and out, the doors in each wall wildly slamming open and shut. In Spinning Room (2008), first conceived in 1971, but being realized for the first time for this show, live images of viewers are rotated and projected onto double-sided screens that appear infinitely reflected on four surrounding mirrored walls, enclosing the viewer in a wildly disorienting space. In Mad House (2008), being created for this show, a room spins disconcertingly on its axis. Two recently rediscovered films by McCarthy, one made in 1966 and one in 1971, reveal the artist's interest in perceptual puzzlement from the very beginning of his career.


Paul McCarthy, Bang Bang Room, 1992
Wood, steel, electric motors, linoleum, wallpaper,dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Hauser & Wirth