Photo provided Silver ink on black paper prints and photo-engraved magnesium plates are part of a new exhibit at 411 Gallery’ titled “Projective Impressions.”
Editor’s note: This story has been corrected so that the artist’s name Sam van Strien is correct throughout the text.
Though the Netherlands-born artist Sam van Strien only became an assistant professor of architecture at Indiana University’s Eskanazi School of Art, Architecture and Design about a month ago, he’s already showcasing his work in the area.
His work exploring the relation between architecture and capitalism can be found now alongside recent works by J. Irwin Miller Architecture program faculty members Daniel Luis Martinez and Silvia Acosta, in addition to works by Acosta’s students in her architecture class, in 411 Gallery’s latest exhibition titled “Projective Impressions.”
“It’s really nice, moving somewhere and not really knowing that many people and trying to get a sense of the art and architecture scene, I was really happy this worked out so soon after moving especially,” van Strien said.
A reception for the gallery will be held on Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m. “Projective Impressions” will run until March 13. The gallery is open Thursdays and Fridays from noon to 6 p.m. or by appointment.
Born in the Dutch city of Delft, van Strien moved to the United Kingdom as a child and attended Central Saint Martins at the University of Arts London. While studying his undergrad, one of his professors had collaborated with Ohio State University’s art department professors and had told him about the art programs he could take there for his masters.
“… I was working with mainly in the painting and drawing area of the program and… there was a professor called George Rush there and he was my supervisor and a lot of his work is in relation to modernist architecture, so it was like a really good fit for my work,” van Strien said.
Strien has now had his work exhibited across the world in London and Seoul, and he recently completed a residency at Tennessee’s Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts. Drawing is his main medium, but he also creates rubbings from buildings and laser-cutting engravings of photos. Much of his work uses archival records to draw and access spaces people can’t access otherwise, like corporate buildings.
“In this exhibition, I’ve been working a lot with photo engraved plates, so these are often the plates I use for printmaking and they’re using archival photographs or sections from archival photographs,” Strien said.
His work in the gallery, in a collection called “Impressions of Capital/Building Capital,” spans across six prints and two etching plates made of magnesium, where photos are transferred onto metal through exposure and engraving, according to 411 Gallery. They center on the Lever House, a modernist skyscraper in Manhattan designed by the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for the Unilever Company.
When producing these works, he said he was thinking of the relationship between corporations and architecture. The building and the basis of the research he conducted for this series also has a connection to Columbus, Strien said, as Skidmore, Owings & Merrill also produced a lot of work in Columbus.
“So like the Republic building is designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and then also there was a city plan that was also master planned by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill,” Strien said. “So I like that, this wasn’t intentional when I was making the work but that it has a connection to Columbus as well. Maybe not the location of the buildings that I’m representing, but there’s the kind of thinking of the connections between the architects.”
van Strien has also published in the UK-based journal “Drawing Matter.” Fellow “Projective Impressions” exhibitor Daniel Luis Martinez, the director of the J. Irwin Miller Architecture Program and director of Graduate Studies – Columbus, also had published in this journal, and that’s how Strien came to apply for his job at IU.
“When the position opened up, he reached out because they were looking for someone who was working between visual art, they were coming in as a visual artist, but making work in response to architecture,” van Strien said. “So when I heard about the job, I was like, ‘OK, this is one of these all your interests align’ and then I applied, had the interview this time last year.”
Martinez’s work in the gallery, titled “Echale Agua” or “Throw Water on It,” are a series of cyanotype prints and mixed media drawings that capture the Cuban and Puerto Rican pastime of playing with dominoes. Each work reconstructs memories of his upbringing in Hialeah, Florida, where several Cuban immigrants reside, and where he spent many weekends playing dominoes with family members, according to 411 Gallery.
Silvia Acosta, another artist in the gallery and a Michael A. and Laurie Burns McRobbie Bicentennial professor in modern architecture, organized a few of her students to show projects from her class last semester. These works in a gallery called “Projective Objects: Mixed Material Construction,” are more three-dimensional models and structures, Strien said.
“The work in the exhibition is quite print focused,” van Strien said. “Daniel’s working a lot with cyanotypes and I’m working a lot with etching plates, so there’s a lot of maybe not conceptual overlap, but material overlap as well.”
