Nelly Agassi “Spirit of the Waves” at the Graham Foundation

Unlike our own bodies, when the body of a building is transformed and renovated, it does not leave many traces of its former self. While its bones remain the same, the building’s design is updated and its purpose changes. In the process of becoming somewhat immortal, hiding its old age with a new skin, the history of the building is erased.

 

The new body of the Madlener house functions as the center of operations for the Graham Foundation—a local and preeminent non-profit dedicated to architecture—but its former self was the grand home of Albert and Elsa Madlener. In “Spirit of the Waves”, Nelly Agassi’s first major solo exhibition in the US, she uncovers what the building once was, and how both its physicality and function have changed. 

 

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